With the arrival of Euro 5, it was the end of the exercise for Moto Morini’s legendary fat V-twin, but there is hope on the horizon. Morini has a new Allroad that will be powered by an updated version of the 1,187cc V-twin.
We can’t remember ever being so impressed with a completely new bike as the Corsaro 1200, the first model of the risen from the ashes Moto Morini. The design was – as befits a real Italian – blood-curdlingly beautiful, but the sensation of the bike was hidden under that beauty: an unprecedented wild beast of a V-twin.
The Bialbero CorsaCorta 87° 1,187cc V-twin designed by Franco Lambertini (indeed, the same Franco Lambertini who saved Morini from destruction in the early 1970s with the Moto Morini 3½) was good for a top power of 142 hp and 123 Nm of torque, making it the largest and fattest V-twin on the market at that time.
In the current era, where as a manufacturer you only really make an impression when you have passed the 200 hp limit, that doesn’t seem like anything, but don’t forget. That 142 horsepower was pure. So no traction control, no riding modes and no ride-by-wire that ensures that you can only really use that top power above 200 km/h. In fact, the Corsaro was so brutal that you even pulled it on the rear wheel in third gear.
In a short period of time Morini put a lot of models on the market based on the CorsaCorta block. In addition to other versions of the Corsaro 1200 (Corsaro Veloce, Corsaro 1200 Sport and Corsaro 1200 Avio), the block was also used for the 9½, Scrambler and Granpasso.
Moto Morini went bankrupt at the end of 2009 before being passed into the hands of two Milanese entrepreneurs in July 2011, who moved production to Milan and moved sales to online, but to no avail. Morini seemed to die a quiet death, until it came into Chinese hands in the autumn of 2018.
Under the new management, development of a new model was started, using a CFMoto 650cc parallel twin, which in turn appears to be a carbon copy of Kawasaki’s 650 twin: the X-Cape and Seiemezzo. The fat V-twin models Corsaro, Granpasso, Milano and Scrambler had to be taken out of production because the block did not meet Euro 5.
That goodbye turns out to be short-lived, however, as Morini is working on a new line-up of fat bikes that will be powered by an updated version of the fat Bialbero CorsaCorta V-twin, in a slimmer and cleaner shape.
The CAD drawings of the new fat Allroad speak for themselves. In terms of styling, the bike clearly has similarities with the X-Cape, while the contours of the CorsaCorta V-twin are clearly visible under the skin. By the way, don’t be fooled by what appears to be an aluminum frame in the computer animations. These are cover caps that conceal the lattice tubular frame.
For the rest, of course, it remains to look at the final specifications of what will probably be marketed as X-Cape 1200. If we have to take a guess, then we think it should be seen as a counterpart to the Multistrada rather than DesertX, just to name two competitors.
– Thanks for information from Motorfreaks.