Specials don’t come any more special than this lovely MV Agusta. And it has an immaculate pedigree, too—it was built by Primo Felotti, the stylist and bodywork fabricator employed by MV Agusta from the 1950s onwards.
The bike is based on a 1977 Ipotesi, a 350cc model designed to bridge the gap between the Varese company’s racers and street bikes. There’s an interesting story behind this replica: at an MV Agusta Revival at Cascina Costa, a fan of the marque noticed a couple of styling exercises created by Felotti to celebrate the 70s works bikes.
The following year, the man visited a restoration workshop that had an Ipotesi for sale—with just 5,000km on the clock. So he bought the Ipotesi and commissioned Felotti to build a replica around it.
The buyer wanted a bike that looked as much as possible like a Grand Prix Four, with two-into-four curved exhausts and a similar seat and petrol tank design.
The body was fabricated entirely by hand, in aluminum; after all these years, Felotti hasn’t lost his touch. The bike is also fully road legal, with a headlight hidden behind a panel on the fairing, and exhausts with baffles that can be removed.
Today, this machine has a new owner and lives in Australia: next time I visit Melbourne, I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.
Images courtesy of photographer Phil Aynsley. Phil’s book Ducati: A Photographic Tribute, with a foreword by Troy Bayliss, is available from Amazon.
