Moto Guzzi Falcone 1952, Itália

Moto Guzzi Falcone 1952, Itália

Fotografia

While today Moto Guzzi is best known for its big V-twins, the company was founded and flourished building flat single-cylinder machines between 1921 and 1976. The pride of this long lineage is the Falcone, the 500cc sporting variant introduced in 1950 and produced until 1963, when it was replaced by, naturally, the Nuovo Falcone. The Falcone proper was an advance on previous models, using a fully-enclosed cylinder head and more importantly, telescopic forks up front. The rear suspension remained the Guzzi trademark swingarm with a pair of springs boxed beneath the engine, with adjustable scissor-type friction dampers at the back. The overall effect of the new forks and an improved big single engine is an amazingly civilized and genteel motorcycle, smooth in operation, mechanically very quiet, and exuding quality from every casting. The Falcone was the ultimate development of a long sporting tradition, and embodies all Moto Guzzi's experience in racing and long-distance endurance events, making this machine a very comfortable and stable ride, with a seemingly tireless engine producing almost no vibration at all. In its day it was the pride of the Italian motorcycle industry, and one of the few large-capacity motorcycles built there, until the advent of Italian multi-cylinder street racers in the late 1960s, a trend to which Moto Guzzi, and the Falcone, succumbed in 1968 with the V7 V-twin, and the death of our beautiful falcon.