What fun to watch the crate come-off, and to see the motorcycle in its glory, awaiting final assembly and prep for you, the proud new owner.
In Ft. Lauderdale, I once stopped in at the Ducati dealer, on State Rd. 7/US 441. It was a Saturday, and I was just taking a bike ride, and stopping at a couple of places to see who showed-up, and looking at the parking lot to see 'who rode what.'
An acquaintance was there, and he was pretty jacked-up. This was before cellphones (for most of us) and he had a paper camera, one of those Kodak recyclable ones where you just gave 'em the entire thing to get your pics developed. There was a crate in the parking lot next to the OH door, and he was going back and forth, taking pics from all-sides.
"Steve, what's in the box?" I asked. Steve ran his own sole-proprietor shop for service & repair of $$$$ foreign cars, he was a licensed Lamborghini technician, and sometimes the local dealership would farm-out repairs to him. It wasn't uncommon to see >a million dollars in customers' cars in there, and this was back in the Last Millenium, early'90's. On one visit to his shop I found him with
two Toyota 2000 GT's waiting their turn. The Toyota factory production totaled 337 units, in the 1960's, when they sold at the same price range as a 427 Tri-Power C2 Corvette; then there was the Aston Martin Lagonda, the 'wedgiest' car you ever saw, a Porsche Turbo, and a Rolls-Royce sedan. There were others... .
A Lagonda:
I could see that the crate had Italian phrases on the cardboard, and the stout block lower-case letters spelling out the crate's origin, it was from bimota.
"I ordered this a year ago, and here it is!" he said. He was documenting the opening of the crate, but without the Millennial 'blue or pink' pyrotechnics common today, in the baby 'reveals.' As the pieces came-off, I considered snatching a piece of the crate bearing the bimota name, but since I was on my bike, I passed.
With the crate's sides removed you could see this was no 'ordinary' bimota (is there such a thing?) The first clue was the curious arrangement of the opposite ends of the bike: "is it coming or going?" A clue, "which end has handlebars above it?" Why the confusion?
Because it had
two swingarms.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1992-bimota-tesi-1d-904sr/
That's how you accommodate center-hub steering, which was tried out in GP racing of the time, different designs from different manufacturers (Ron Haslam famously rode a Honda-powered [3-cyl RS500 two-stroke] design, sponsored by French petroleum company ELF, which gave a good accounting of itself, though he was only able to win on it once at the 1986 Macau G.P.), Yamaha had an FZR1000-engine and their own center-hub steering design, sold to the public thirsting for an advanced design front suspension, the GTS1000, a quarter the price (~$13K) of the bimota Tesi 1-D. Our own Captain Kyle had one pass through his shop on its way to a new owner.
https://www.cycleworld.com/story/bikes/coolest-sportbikes-90s-1993-yamaha-gts1000/
https://www.motorcyclistonline.com/elf-racing-elf-motorcycle-chassis-designs-retrospective/
A simply gorgeous piece of Italian design and mechanical execution whose price for acquisition was beyond most of the riders of the time. That is, unless you're willing to spend what at the time was between the median annual pay for someone with a 4-year diploma and a master's diploma ~$45,000 (US Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau).
The proud new owner acted like he was just-done consuming a double-shot of
espresso, as the uncrated bike sat there in the sun, probably for the first time in a month since it had been crated in Rimini Italy, on the Adriatic Sea. I have to admit, it was gorgeous, all the hand-machined parts, faint milling marks bearing proof of its labor-intensive hand-crafted construction. Let's face it, you're
never going to see yourself on the other side of
any intersection, riding this!
"It's only new, once," as the saying goes, so revel in the uncrating, snap some cellphone pics, and await the final dealer servicing. And grab a piece of the crate cardboard revealing 'what's inside the box?' The shop/garage
needs it on the wall.
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