TWO-STROKE TUESDAY: MOTO VILLA V4 250 TWO-STROKE PROTOTYPE
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TWO-STROKE TUESDAY: MOTO VILLA V4 250 TWO-STROKE GRAND PRIX PROTOTYPE
The Moto Villa V4 prototype looks like a fairly normal 1969 road racer with a full fairing, Ceriani forks and Fontana double-leading-shoe brakes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Moto Villa firm was born thanks to the experience of Francesco Villa, a skillful racer and technician for Ducati, FB Mondial and Montesa, who had built his own two-stroke 125 racing motorcycle in 1965, called Beccaccino, which he gave to the Spanish Montesa firm. Francesco’s new company’s first actual branded bike was the Moto Villa PR125 in 1968. It was an evolution of the Beccaccino.
Francesco and Walter Villa began building their own motorcycles in 1968. Walter was the Italian 125 road racing champion four times as well as a two-time winner of the Barcelona 24-hour race. His brother Francesco had designed two-stroke race bikes for both Mondial and Montesa. Walter Villa would go on to win three consecutive 250cc World Road Racing Championships for Harley-Davidson in 1974, 1975 and 1976 and also added a world Title in the 350 class one in the 350 class. The success of Moto Villa was based on Francesco engineering prowess, but backed up by Walter’s road racing talent—even though Walter’s biggest wins weren’t on a Moto Villa.
Underneath the fiberglass a four-cylinder two-stroke engine is nestled into a chromoly steel frame.
When he was at Mondial, Francesco designed and raced a horizontal single-cylinder 125 two-stroke and a twin-cylinder 250two-stroke. So once he started Moto Villa he wanted to build a four-cylinder two-stroke road race bike. His plan entailed a four-cylinder V4 two-stroke. Boiled down to its essence, Villa’s 250cc Grand Prix engine was two air-cooled 125cc twins with a 43mm x 43mm bore/stroke stacked on top of each other on a common crankcase at a 30 degree angle. The crankshafts were connected via a coupling gear. Drive was transmitted via a dry clutch to an eight-speed gearbox, and the engine/transmission unit was housed in a heavily gusseted duplex chromoly frame. Ceriani supplied the forks and shocks with Fontana brakes on both wheels.
The front view of the two stacked twin-cylinder 125 two-stroke engines provided the engine with adequate air cooling thanks to the generously finned cylinder heads.
Tragically for the Villas, their new baby arrived just in time to be rendered obsolete by the 1970 FIM’s rule change that limit 250 engines to a maximum of two cylinders. Not deterred, but intrigued to see their two-stroke monster in a race, the Villa brothers entered the untried V4 in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. All the bugs had not been ironed out and Walter parked the V4 after some practice lapsraced a rotary valve single that had been brought as backup.
This Moto Villa V4 is a replica that was faithfully built after the one-and only V4 was sold to Bombardier in Canada and has changed hands since then. But a former Moto Villa employee, Giovanni Galafassi, with Francesco Villa’s assistance, collected all the parts and drawings and after a ten-year project of love, built an almost perfect manifestation of Villa’s orange and white 1969 prototype.
The post TWO-STROKE TUESDAY: MOTO VILLA V4 250 TWO-STROKE PROTOTYPE appeared first on Motocross Action Magazine.
