BIKES YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE: FUEL-INJECTED MOTO VILLA FV125 TWO-STROKE

BIKES YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE: THE FUEL-INJECTED MOTO VILLA FV125 TWO-STROKE

Originally shown at the Milan Show back in 2018, the Moto Villa 125FV resurfaces occasionally to honor of Francesco Villa (FV) who passed away in 2020.

The Moto Villa FV125 is both a bike of the past and a bike of the future. The “FV” stands for Francesco Villa, a famous Italian builder with a long track record of accomplishments. Francesco Villa started working on race machines in his early 20s as a mechanic at Ducati under Fabio Taglioni’s direction, but eventually was recruited for his racing talent to join the Ducati road race team. In 1968, Francesco, who had been designing for Montesa, and his brother Walter decided to build their own motorcycles. Walter Villa won the 1975 250 World Road Racing Championship and 1976 250cc and 350 World Championships for Aermacchi/Harley-Davidson. The two brothers were Italian icons of racing and Moto Villa would like to produce the FV125 in their honor.

If you look at the throttle body, you will see the EFI nozzle’s T-fitting angled towards the cylinder.

In addition to the four World titles, Walter won eight Italian Championships. After he retired at the end of the 1980 season, Villa became a key player in the Grand Prix historic motorsport circuit. Walter died at the age of 58 of a heart attack in 2002. Francesco kept the family’s racing heritage alive with a series of special race bikes, but in 2012 sold Moto Villa to the Bivio family. In 2019 Francesco opened a permanent motorcycle museum dedicated to the history of Moto Villa. However two months later, in February 2020, Francesco Villa passed away at the age of 87.

The wheels on the  FV125 are from X2R Rock wheels. Note the there are no spoke nipples on the wheels.

The new, or newish, Moto Villa FV125 engine has a 54mm bore and 54.4 mm stroke, six-speed gearbox, pneumatic power valve, electronic fuel injection and programmable ECU. According to reports, the engine has been benched tested since its original introduction to fine tune the fuel-injection system, and a working engine has been put a chromoly frame for actual field tests.

The “factory-like” single-backbone frame is finished out with an aluminum gas tank and airbox. The components include 48m Kayaba forks, Ohlins TTX Flow shock, 270mm/240mm Braking Wave discs, Brembo brake calipers and master cylinders and X2R Rock wheels (laced with nipple-less spokes).

The FV125 isn’t new. It was introduced at the 2018 Milan Show and it was reported that it would see limited production. It would be great if it was, but that isn’t the track record of one-off Italian prototypes. It’s been sitting the Moto Villa race shop since it’s debut at the Milan show in 2018, but maybe, just maybe…

OTHER BLASTS FROM MOTO VILLA’S PAST

This 1983 Moto Villa 250MCA has a very works Honda look to it.

The 1984 Moto Villa 495MCA was piloted by Tony Elias. No, not MotoGP and MotoAmerica road racer Toni Elias, but his father Toni, Sr.