CarBrandLogos archive · Bimota · 1997
A fuel-injected 500cc two-stroke that very nearly finished the company.
Discover the storyPhoto: https://www.flickr.com/photos/varintsai/ · CC BY 2.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Bimota V Due, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
Bimota set out in the 1990s to do something no manufacturer had managed: build a road-legal 500 cc two-stroke at a time when emissions rules were exterminating the class. The proposed solution was direct fuel injection, squirting petrol into the cylinder after the exhaust port had closed, which in principle eliminates the two-stroke's fundamental vice of throwing unburnt fuel straight out of the exhaust.
Bimota VDue 2 · Philippe on fr.wikipedia.org · CC BY 3.0
02
The V Due was launched in 1997 with a liquid-cooled 90-degree V-twin, and it was the first engine Bimota had ever built for itself rather than bought in. The chassis was excellent. The injection system was not: fuelling was erratic, deliveries went out unresolved, and the company found itself buying bikes back and trying to fix them at its own expense.
Bimota V-Due · [1] · CC BY-SA 2.0
03
Between the development cost, the warranty liability and the damage to its reputation, the programme pushed Bimota into insolvency in 2000. Later machines were converted to carburettors and sold in small numbers as the V Due Evoluzione, and they rode beautifully, which confirmed what everyone had suspected: the chassis had never been the problem.
At a glance
Produced
1997–2005Technical specification
Contemporaries from the 1990s
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