Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

ITALJET HISTORY: Tartarini's Tale

That number 59 adorning the 650 Grifon says it all, for 1959 was the year that Italjet was founded by Massimo Tartarini’s father Leopoldo – known better as ‘Poldino’ to the many friends he acquired in more than half a century of two-wheeled achievement.

Tartarini Senior began his motorcycle career at age 19 in 1952, winning the sidecar class in the gruelling 18-hour single-stage Milano-Taranto open-roads marathon with a twin-cylinder BSA 650 Golden Flash-engined outfit he'd built himself. Poldino's racing successes included winning the 125cc class of the 1953 Milano-Taranto on a Benelli Leoncino two-stroke and overall victory in the six-stage 1000 km. Giro d'Italia on the same bike, plus many victories in local hillclimbs and races. This brought him to the attention of Count Domenico Agusta, who offered him a place in his MV Agusta race team for the 1954 GP season - an honour which Tartarini was obliged to refuse, after his mother begged him to stay and home and manage the family business after his father, the leading Moto Guzzi dealer in Bologna, passed away.

Instead, Tartarini joined the Ducati factory in his home town, signing to race for them in 1954 as a works rider and development engineer, working alongside another new arrival, the legendary Ing. Fabio Taglioni on whose bikes he gained much success, signing off his racing career with a flourish by winning the Barcelona 24 Hours on a Ducati. Tartarini then embarked on a year-long adventure as a publicity stunt for the Italian firm, in the company of Ducati's export sales manager, Giorgio Monetti. Together, the pair completed a year-long 60,000 km. round-the-world trip aboard a couple of 175cc Ducati singles, visiting 42 countries after leaving Bologna in September 1957 to ride to India, then via Australia, New Zealand, South America, North Africa, and through Europe back to Italy again.

Back home in Bologna again, Tartarini began manufacturing his own bikes under the Italemmezeta (as in ItalMZ) name, using engines sourced from MZ in East Germany. In 1961, he branched out into the flourishing 50cc market with a Minarelli-powered cafe racer whose sporty looks required an appropriate name - the 'Italjet', and the Tartarini firm was renamed Italjet Moto. As such, he was commissioned by the BSA-Triumph firm to develop a prototype Ariel lightweight model powered by a 160cc two-stroke Minarelli engine, which was intended to replace the elderly but best-selling BSA Bantam. The project never reached production - but at the 1965 Milan Show Tartarini displayed the twin-cylinder Italjet Grifo (sic) 500 with a Triumph engine fitted in a twin-loop Italjet frame, to produce an Italian-built production version of the Triton cafe racer then already popular as a home-made special in Britain. But the Grifo name was already employed by a rival firm, so Tartarini resolved that problem by adding an 'n' - but then his finger on the pulse of the market told him the big bike era was about to dawn, and that a sports bike based on the 650cc Bonneville motor would have a better chance of sales success. Triumph agreed to sell him such engines, so production began in 1967 of the Marzocchi-forked, Grimeca-braked Grifon 650. Around 600 bikes in all were sold worldwide during the next five years, although none found their way to Britain when sold new - Triumph didn’t even bother acquiring one itself to take a look at!

Italjet's successful range of innovative minibikes produced during the early '60s, brought the firm to the attention of American entrepreneur Floyd Clymer, who commissioned Tartarini to manufacture Minarelli-engined 50cc minibikes under the Indian Papoose name - Clymer owned the trademark to the historic American marque. These were so successful Clymer also commissioned Tartarini to build full-size Indian motorcycles. based on the Italjet Grifon design, but fitted firstly with Royal Enfield Interceptor 750cc parallel-twin engines, then Velocette 500cc single motors, before Clymer's death in 1970 brought an end to the project.

By now Tartarini's talents for building good-looking, fine-handling bikes of all capacities was well established, leading to a renewed collaboration with Ducati to style the Mark III singles – making it no coincidence these looked so much like the Grifon 650 twin. Tartarini then turned his attention to Taglioni's new range of 750cc V-twins, first penning the valve-spring 750 Sport which appeared in 1971, then the bike which for many people represents the ultimate Ducati, the iconic Imola replica 750SS. The lean, cobby looks of this desirable bevel-drive desmo were entirely owed to Leopoldo Tartarini, a modest forerunner of Massimo Tamburini and Pierre Terblanche. Later in the decade, Italjet designed the range of 350/500cc Ducati parallel-twins, and actually manufactured the bikes in its San Lazzaro factory, using engines trucked across town from Ducati, and also created the good-looking 900 Darmah V-twin.

The Ducatis shared space on the Italjet production lines with the Yamaha-engined 125cc Buccaneer twin, built from 1971 onwards with engines purchased directly from Yamaha. Tartarini's restless imagination and capacity for innovation extended to developing the Pack-A-Way, a 50cc moped that could be folded up into a package complete with carrying handle, the prototype of which found its way to New York's Museum of Modern Art, becaming a must-have accessory for sailors, campers and the like. In 1980, Italjet moved into the trials world, with a range of offroad bikes powered for the first time by the firm’s own engines, specially developed for their light weight and compact build. Until the debut of the firm's 125c GP racer in 1998, this was the only time the firm’s own engines were used in an Italjet. Instead, the company preferred to source its engines from outside - from Triumph, Minarelli, MZ, Franco Morini, Yamaha, Piaggio, CZ and others.

The coming of the late 20th century scooter boom was clearly foreseen by Tartarini, and from 1980 onwards Italjet successfully rode the wave of demand for personal transportation with a unique selection of innovative and quirky models, like the retro-look Torpedo and Velocifero, or the avantgarde hub-centre Dragster and leading-edge Formula - for many years the only twin-cylinder scooter in the market. With its 180 workers producing up to 90,000 powered two-wheelers each year in the firm’s modern 10,000 sq.mt. factory on the Adriatic coast near Pescara, Italjet flourished in the 1990s. This fuelled the development of its own 125cc GP racer, which proved a race-winner at national level in the hands of Czech rider Jaroslav Hules, and helped kickstart the race career of Ducati’s current BSB Superbike star Leon Haslam before the company’s sudden financial troubles forced Italjet out of racing in 2003.

Tartarini also had to cancel the born-again Triumph-engined three-cylinder Italjet Grifon 900 launched at the 1999 Milan Show. Powered by the Triumph T300 three-cylinder engine, the Grifon 900 would have been the first ever motorcycle to be built outside Hinckley powered by Triumph engines supplied under an official agreement with John Bloor himself, but unfavourable exchange rates meant the engines cost too much for the bike to be sold at a competitive price.

The sudden collapse of the 50cc scooter market led in June 2002 to a trading link with Piaggio, planned to focus on creating new products for the Piaggio group, via innovative design and creative technology. Italjet’s own range continuing to sparkle with niche-market novelties like the Dragster and Jet-Set, as well as the three-wheeler Scooop (sic - 3 x ‘o’!), which delivered stability in turns thanks to the twin front wheels steered by a handlebar, yet allowed the rider to lean into curves on the pivoting vehicle. After Italjet’s demise, the Scooop project was acquired from the receiver by Piaggio, and in due course became the acclaimed MP3 on sale today – a fact Piaggio has conveniently overlooked in marketing it.

For in 2003 Italjet became insolvent and entered bankruptcy, closing the Pescara factory and the firm’s Bologna base, with the majority of its product line sold by the receiver to Kinetic in India, where the various models continue to resurface. The exception to this was the idiosyncratic hub-centre Dragster scooter, the rights to which – together with the Italjet name - were acquired by Tartarini’s eldest son Massimo. He had worked for his father’s firm as Commercial Director, before leaving in 1998 to set up Derbi Italia in a 50/50 partnership with the Spanish company’s founding Rabasa family, a venture which sold 15,000 small capacity motorcycles and scooters in Italy before Piaggio acquired Derbi in 2001. “I went back to Italjet for six months or so to help my dad try to save the company, but it was too far gone,” says Massimo sadly. “The problem wasn’t so much the Taiwanese and Chinese competition, so much as the steep and sudden collapse of the 50cc scooter market just at the time Italjet was investing heavily in new models like the Jet-Set and Jupiter – as well as the MP3 Scooop, which entailed a lot of new technology it was costly to develop. But this wasn’t irresponsible expenditure, because in 2000 Italjet had sold 90,000 units, its best ever year, and was looking to grow.” Instead, production slumped to just 60,000 two-wheelers in 2002, and was set to diminish further the following year when the receiver was called in. It was a sad end to the 44-year history of one of Italy’s most innovative and individual marques – but one that’s now set for revival in the hands of its founding father’s son. For as well as the Grifon 650 being developed with Hyosung, Massimo Tartarini is set to relaunch a range of Italjet Dragster scooters in November at this year’s Milan Show, using 50cc two-stroke and 125/250cc four-stroke engines sourced from Piaggio. It’ll be back to the future for the Italjet marque….

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Photo credit: Alan Cathcart Archive

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