The Tamburini T12 Massimo perfectly fits the late Massimo Tamburini’s reputation, whose name is synonymous on two wheels with beauty, excellence, innovation and performance, the collective fruits of his heartfelt passion and consummate artistry which together have combined to produce motorcycles of breathtaking effectiveness, and timeless appeal.
With Tamburini’s retirement from MV Agusta in December 2008 after its acquisition by Harley-Davidson, it was widely assumed that his ongoing creation of ultra-desirable and literally iconic designs like the Bimota SB2, Cagiva 500GP, Ducati 916, Cagiva Mito and MV Agusta F4/Brutale, had finally come to an end. But like all great artists, Massimo had one final masterpiece kept up his sleeve, which with the expiry on January 1, 2012 of the non-compete contract he’d signed when cashing in his MV equity after the Harley takeover, he immediately began turning the ideas he’d been juggling around in his mind for the previous 36 months, into reality. Powered by a four-cylinder BMW S1000RR engine, the Tamburini T12 Massimo – T for Tamburini, 12 because the project officially began in 2012, and Massimo as a play on words, since besides being his forename it also means ‘ultimate’ in Italian – was intended to be the ne plus ultra of performance motorcycling, the most refined, most uncompromisingly effective and most downright beautiful sportbike the world had yet seen. It was a design which a combination of commercial and budgetary restrictions, as well as ever more onerous homologation rules, had thus far prevented Tamburini from producing, as the ultimate expression of his creative passion.
Tragically, though, with the Tamburini T12 Massimo project well under way, in September 2013 Massimo Tamburini was diagnosed with lung cancer, leading to his early death in April 2014, aged 70. Though he’d worked hard to try to complete the bike before he passed away, it wasn’t to be. Instead, it was left to his son Andrea, 47, to bring the project to fruition, himself a talented designer who’d worked alongside his dad officially ever since 1988, after looking over his shoulder from a very young age. Indeed, Andrea was originally responsible for creating the MV Agusta Corse aftermarket catalogue dripping with magnesium and carbon fibre goodies, developed in an adjacent unit to his father’s CRC workshop in San Marino. But after his dad’s departure from MV, Andrea turned that company over to Harley-Davidson, and founded Tamburini Corse in San Marino with the support but no involvement of his father, continuing to make special parts and restyled bodywork mainly for MVs, but also some Ducati models. It was Tamburini Corse which in March this year broke the news via its website of the completion of two examples of the Tamburini T12 Massimo, one of which had already been tested by ex-World champion Luca Cadalora at the Modena autodromo, with promising results.
Andrea Tamburini
“My father left MV Agusta in December 2008, so from the beginning of 2009 up until the end of 2012 he had to stop working on bikes because of the non-compete agreement he signed after Harley bought MV. So he took three years of rest – but that didn’t mean he couldn’t think while he was resting! Meanwhile, in 2009 I founded Tamburini Corse in which I am the sole shareholder, so then after Papa was officially free to work on new projects, Tamburini Corse sourced parts for these two Tamburini T12 Massimo prototypes, and took care of the assembly of them – but he was entirely responsible for conceiving them, down to the smallest detail.”
“After Papa passed away, we completed assembly of the bikes here at Tamburini Corse, and on March 1st 2016 our family formed Massimo Tamburini srl to take care of the commercialisation of the T12 Massimo. There are seven shareholders in all, with myself as President, plus my mother, my two sisters Morena and Simona, and three close associates who each played a key role in developing the project, having worked with my father on it from the very start. Luciano Guerri is an ex-Ferrari F1 designer who acted as the link between my father and various suppliers, while Franco Iorio is one of the directors of CPC in Modena, a specialist supplier of composites who also provided the patterns for casting magnesium components, and finally Paolo Picchi, who worked for my father at CRC before starting his own design company.”
“We revealed the project online on March 6, and the response has been literally incredible. I personally had high expectations, because I knew how respected my father was in the world of motorcycling, but the global reaction to the bike’s debut online – not even in the metal – was way over and beyond that. After the website had been online for just 20mins the site manager called me to say that there had been a highly anomalous amount of traffic on it, which already amounted to 20,000 hits! Were we expecting it to be so high?! We’d opened a Facebook page the day before, and by the end of the first week that had 850,000 friends. So ever since then we’ve been trying to manage this level of interest in the project, which in my humble opinion is the greatest achievement of my father’s career, while also evaluating what should be the correct path to take if we bring it to the marketplace. We haven’t yet decided what to do – and we honestly haven’t thought about a price, apart from working out how much it’s cost us so far to create these two prototypes. We floated the idea that a limited edition hand-built replica might cost as much as 300,000 Euro, just to see what the public response would be – and let’s just say we were very surprised at it! We realise that we must take advantage of this, so we will announce our plans for the T12 at a presentation we’re organising with the help of the Emilia-Romagna region, the city of Rimini and the circuit of Misano at the San Marino MotoGP at Misano on September 9-11. We’ll have a display about my father’s life work open in Rimini for 15 days before then, and the Tamburini T12 Massimo will be the centerpiece of this in making its public debut in real life, not just on the web. Cadalora’s test bike will also be on display at the circuit, and on the Thursday night we’ll hold a gathering there at which we’ll announce the way ahead for the bike – and the price!”
“My father only thought about the bike during his three years of gardening leave. Throughout his life he always wanted to give free expression to his ideas. He had the good fortune to work under the mantle of Claudio Castiglioni, who realised that it was most fruitful in terms of the product which ultimately eventuated to leave my father to express himself on his own, while nevertheless adding his own comments and suggestions which my father very much welcomed – he had the greatest respect for Claudio. However, this meant he always had to express himself within a commercial context, in the sense that he had to be aware of the time and the budget it took to produce a product, and its place in the market, so to that extent there were limitations placed on his freedom of expression design-wise.”
“So then when he found himself free from MV and able to work without commercial constraints with complete freedom of expression, he was able to adopt a different approach, aimed solely at producing absolutely the best design possible. My father was a purist, a perfectionist – he was never content with what he had designed, and he always thought he could improve on it. He used to tell me that the limitations that a person faced in terms of future achievement were only as great as those they placed on themselves. That’s why he was both stimulating and frustrating to work for – he pushed people to achieve things they didn’t think they were capable of doing, but then suggested ways in which they might improve still further on what they’d done. Never be satisfied with what you’ve achieved – you can always do better, was his motto. When people termed him a genius, he found it flattering but frustrating, because he genuinely believed he was an extremely ordinary person who was passionate about design, who believed in what he was doing, and had the ability to concentrate his mind on achieving his goal, and then work on making it better. He also recognised that it took someone like Claudio Castiglioni to provide him with the means to achieve these objectives, which without him could never have been realised.”
“For example, not many people know that when he left Bimota, which at the time was an enormous wrench, my dad ended up believing it was a huge step forward, because it brought him together with Claudio, who then provided him with the means to achieve so much more than he could ever have done at Bimota. That’s why when the Castiglionis sold Ducati to the Americans, Papa didn’t go with them, but stayed with Cagiva. It’s also why, when MV Agusta was experiencing one of its several economic crises, he turned down an offer from Ivano Beggio, then the owner of Aprilia, to go and work for him. The two of us were invited to Noale, where Beggio told my father in front of me (and these were his exact words), “Tamburini, I want to pursue your hand in marriage even more strongly than I pursued my wife’s!” He then produced a contract he’d had prepared, with the amount he would pay my father as a signing-on fee, and the monthly salary he would earn, left blank. He said to my father, “Go away and fill in the numbers, then sign the contract and send it back to me, and tell me when you want to start.” Beggio back then was the No.1 person in the European motorcycle industry, with Aprilia riding high in the sales charts – this was around 2000, something like that.”
Andrea Tamburini and his father Massimo (2004)
“But my father thanked him for this great opportunity, and told him he’d come to see him as a courtesy, because he wanted to explain to him face to face why he was declining his offer of marriage! “I can’t deny that I’d like very much to come and work for you in Aprilia,” he said, “but if I leave MV it will mean the company shuts down, and not only will I betray Claudio’s trust in me which he has expressed by supporting CRC for so many years, but I will also be responsible for 400 families losing their means of living, which I can’t do.” He knew that the banks were only supporting MV because Massimo Tamburini was still working for them. I was lost in admiration for what he’d said – because I knew that we weren’t receiving any salary ourselves because of MV’s difficulties! Yet he’d turned down the chance to be very well paid and have an even bigger operation, because he thought it was the right thing to do. Claudio always behaved as a true gentleman from the moment my father left Bimota in 1983, and my father appreciated this so deeply that he could never bring himself to throw that in his face. Behave to others as you wish they would behave to you, he always said. Working for Aprilia or any of the other big manufacturers which approached him from time to time, he could have made a great deal more money than working for MV – but he knew he’d never find someone else like Claudio who not only supported him in terms of resources, but also gave him a completely free hand out of mutual respect. Although he had 2% of MV Agusta stock, my father regarded money as a means to an end, to allow him to express himself in terms of design. Provided he had that, he wasn’t interested in fancy cars or a champagne lifestyle – just in working towards expressing himself with the products he designed.”
“OK – so how did the Tamburini T12 Massimo come about? My dad thought about the design for three years, but never produced any drawings until the day the no-compete clause ended in January 2012. He then gathered the three industry partners and me around him, and explained that his objective was to produce a bike which incorporated what he termed the essence of motorcycling. He had always had in his mind what such a bike might be, but for commercial and economic grounds he could never produce it – until now. He told us this was going to be his last project, and he wanted it to encompass all that he had learned in his life as a designer, and to incorporate as many of the elements he hadn’t been able to adopt in the past on any of his previous designs, for whatever reason – commercial, financial, etc. At that stage he had no concerns about his health, but even so he accepted and even intended that this would be his last great design. Sadly, he found out he was ill in September 2013, and his health went downhill very fast after that – he passed away in April 2014.”
“Why choose a BMW engine? Even though it wasn’t Italian, he believed it had the greatest potential for development. He also admired its design, its reliability, and the performance it had achieved in Superbike racing. He believed it was the best four-cylinder engine available in the marketplace, and he reasoned that what he intended should be the finest no-compromises motorcycle yet designed should have a similarly excellent engine. He also wanted it to be a bike built to be used on the racetrack in top level competition, rather than stuck in someone’s front room as a two-wheeled oil painting – he used to remind us that this was supposed to be una moto efficace ad alte prestazioni – an effective, high performance motorcycle, more than just a beautiful one, which would have had a super high level of attention focused on its performance and effectiveness. We had some aerodynamic studies made by a Swiss company which confirmed that, in the form we have presented it, the Tamburini T12 Massimo has an exceptionally good Cx figure, comparable to Marquez’s 2012 Honda – but I don’t think it looks so ugly, do you?!”
“We never contacted BMW until the bike was already built and being tested, so we didn’t get the engine from them directly, as many people have speculated. Absolutely not – we did it completely under the radar as far as they were concerned. We bought an S1000RR from the Rimini BMW dealer, took the engine out of it, and measured up the mounting points to build the frame. Then, through Davide Tardozzi, who of course was Bimota’s factory rider just after my father left them, but whom he knew well and was at that time manager of the BMW factory Superbike team, we obtained that bike’s oil sump and waterpump housing which, being machined from solid aluminium, are different on the Superbike racer from the road bike. We wanted to make sure that the BMW Superbike engine would fit in the frame in the hope we might one day obtain one. That’s all in the future – at the moment the bike which Luca Cadalora tested for us at Modena has a streetbike S1000RR motor fitted with the side-exit Arrow titanium race exhaust, but the bodywork and frame are ready to accept a Superbike race motor once we obtain one.”
“Once we had finished the bike, we contacted BMW and invited them to come and look at it. They came twice – and the second time we had the top people in the BMW Motorrad design and marketing divisions, who were literally lost for words! My father’s work has that effect on people – I remember very well what you wrote after seeing the Ducati 916 prototype for the first time six months before it was launched! BMW took the Tamburini T12 Massimo and analysed it in depth, and admitted they would find it very difficult to achieve such a high level of detail in so many elements, being a large series production company rather than a small design house. Therefore, they told us they would be happy to give us whatever we need to pursue the project into limited production, because for them – BMW – it’s an honour to see their engine forming the basis of such a design. This will include supplies of their highest-spec 235 bhp Superbike engine as and when we want it, or else a Superstock version for less extreme performance. If we do put it into limited production, as seems increasingly likely, we will be able to offer customers the choice of such engines.”
“The Tamburini T12 Massimo chassis has the hybrid design which my father typically favoured, with the engine used as a fully stressed structural component, The cast magnesium steering head is attached to a very stiff spaceframe made from military-level steel tubing, which allows us to cut down on wall thickness, and thus reduce weight without sacrificing stiffness. This in turn is attached via special bolts to the twin rear sideplates which are also cast in magnesium, and in which the single-sided swingarm likewise cast in magnesium pivots, while the Marchesini wheels are both forged magnesium to my father’s design. There are Ergal 55 aluminium mounting plates milled from solid attached to the sides of the cylinder head to carry the bodywork, while all the footrests and linkages are also billet aluminium. Naturally, the chassis is fully adjustable in terms of steering geometry and suspension settings, as well as having a variable height swingarm pivot. The choice of the various materials comprising the chassis has a technical objective, because of the resonant vibration which can amplify itself dynamically to the point that it upsets the overall handling and suspension compliance, and can especially create chatter. Using a variety of materials which have different points of resonance enhances the compliance of the suspension at extreme angles of lean. So making a part in magnesium has one degree of resonance, making it in aluminium another, and in carbon fibre a third. My father designed the Tamburini T12 Massimo to be able to control the chassis resonance in such a way that it enhances the motorcycle’s behaviour. This is why he developed the modular frame design concept, to be able to do this.”
“He also developed – and patented – a means of altering the transverse rigidity of the chassis. He did this with a system which subtly allows you to vary to a micrometric extent the stiffness of the chassis. This is important once you adopt more than around 45 degrees of lean angle in a turn, because the suspension is no longer able to work truly effectively, and forces are translated back into the frame, If you’re able to finely adjust the transverse flexibility of the frame to an appropriate degree, you can then adjust the suspension to better respond to these demands, as well as to optimize the performance and durability of your rear tyre. Our patented system permits that – but I’m sorry, I can’t show you yet how exactly we do this!”
“The same considerations apply to the single-sided cast magnesium swingarm, which was my father’s chosen design ever since the Ducati 916 almost 25 years ago. Why? There are three reasons and the first two are the least important – it looks nice, and you can change the rear tyre quickly. But the third reason he always chose this is the most important. With the constant improvement of rear tyre performance week by week – not year by year – it remains vital that you should achieve perfect torsional stiffness for the swingarm, but it’s increasingly desirable to have some transverse flexibility which results in a degree of controlled deflection of the rear contact patch, which you cannot obtain with a dual-sided swingarm
“All the components on theTamburini T12 Massimo are the maximum possible available in their sector. So the Brembo Monobloc brakes are wet weather components from MotoGP – my father thought about fitting carbon brakes, but decided against them in terms of practicality – complete with Staubli metal lines and quick release connections. The Öhlins suspension also comes from MotoGP, but the Tamburini T12 Massimo has an even higher level of rear suspension performance than a MotoGP bike, because of a modification which Papa persuaded Öhlins to make to their race shock. This entailed fitting a counter-spring within the body of the shock – which was very difficult for them to do, but they succeeded. This delivers such an outstanding level of compliance and performance that Luca Cadalora, when he tested the Tamburini T12 Massimo at Modena autodromo, did not make a single adjustment to the shock rear setting, not even a single click! It’s highly likely that, now that Öhlins has had the validity of this design confirmed, they will incorporate it in their MotoGP shocks for 2017!”
“My father chose forged magnesium wheels rather than carbon fibre ones because he hoped that one day someone might race the Tamburini T12 Massimo in whatever form of competition it would be admitted to, and that would have required metal wheels. To that extent this was a compromise forced on him by the rules. But even with these wheels fitted the dry weight of the Tamburini T12 Massimo is 154.5kg, which I believe is exceptional for this type of motorcycle fitted with a series production four-cylinder engine. Sorry, but I can’t give you the exact weight distribution, which we prefer to keep to ourselves at present, but I will only say that it has a slight forward weight bias, but not an exceptional one. In the same way, we prefer not to disclose the steering geometry and wheelbase figures at the moment – but let’s just say that these are all comparable to current MotoGP figures, and that while the bike looks very small and quite short, the wheelbase is over 1400mm.”
“The bodywork is entirely made in carbon fibre, and that includes the 21.5-litre fuel tank, which it’s important to underline is a load-bearing structural component of the chassis. As is normal these days, the front section comprises the airbox, which is larger than the standard BMW one, with all the throttle bodies and trumpets housed within it. The fuel tank proper commences at the filler cap, then reaches back beneath the seat as part of the chassis, with the seat mounted directly on it – there’s no rear subframe. This design employs many structural techniques from Formula 1, where the fuel tanks are also full load-bearing components, similarly made from carbon fibre. My father took pains to ensure the mechanical components of the bike were completely accessible – within two minutes the bike can be stripped to its bare essentials. The dashboard and all electronics come from MoTeC, and the wiring harness employs aerospace technology. My father intended that this should be strictly a racing motorcycle, so we have no headlamps or street equipment considered.”
“It’s important to stress that my father was completely responsible for not only the overall concept of the bike, but also the choice of all the components incorporated in it from outside suppliers. All that I have done with my partners is to complete assembly of two prototypes of the Tamburini T12 Massimo, and demonstrate its efficacy by going to Modena autodromo for Luca Cadalora to test it, as my father had asked him to do before he passed away. First of all, I want to thank Luca for undertaking this task – he refused to take a single Euro for doing so, saying that it was an honour to be the one asked to ride it – and also Yamaha with whom he is contractually bound as support for Valentino, for releasing him to make the test. But the most remarkable thing is that in four uninterrupted hours of running, the Tamburini T12 Massimo ran perfectly. Luca commented from the first how light the bike felt, and how easily it steered. As I said before, he didn’t make a single change to the rear suspension settings which my father had determined two and a half years previously, but worked quite a bit on the front suspension, which he found too stiff for someone like him coming from 250GP, where he likes the front wheel to talk to him. Pirelli kindly furnished us with tyres, and in those four hours he found a softer setting he really liked that suited the tyre well. I have no idea what the lap record is for the Modena autodromo, which is rather short so he didn’t get out of fourth gear. But it’s an ideal test track, and I’d be surprised if by the end he wasn’t on lap record pace with my father’s final creation! All the time Cadalora was riding it, I felt him looking down at us, and I have the sense that he must surely have been satisfied to see his ultimate design performing so well on its first visit to a racetrack.”
“At the stage that Papa passed away the only things we didn’t yet have to assemble the motorcycle were the machined magnesium castings for the chassis – everything else had been delivered, including the bodywork and other frame components. I brought many of the parts to show him in his bedroom, and I assured him before he left us that I would complete the project exactly as he had conceived it, so that’s what I have done. He was working on the project right up until the day before he died, and thanks to Paolo Picchi that day I was able to take him an incredibly realistic computer image of the finished bike, as well as photos of all the components we’d assembled, so he could be comforted by the knowledge that the bike would live after him – and that’s what’s happened. He was always very self-critical of his designs – some he’d say he hated, and wanted to start all over again to design them ‘properly’! Well, this time, even though he was quite heavily sedated, he looked at all the images I’d brought him of the Tamburini T12 Massimo, which I personally think looks best from the rear three-quarter view, which it’s always difficult for designers to get right because of the visual dominance of the rear tyre. He looked through them all, then pointed at the rear three-quarter shot and said, “This is a beautiful bike – it even looks good from the rear!”
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Photo credit: Kel Edge and Tamburini Corse
