Moto Guzzi GRISO 1200 4 Valve
The best-looking bike of the past couple of years for me has not
been some high-performance superbike, exotic race replica,
upmarket cruiser or hand-built special, but it was at least
Italian. Moto Guzzi's Griso started life as an improbable concept
that turned to reality following enormous pressure from potential
customers, and the old but turbulent factory found enough time to
attend to a host of pleasing details while remaining faithful to
the concept's basic theme.
This year's Euro emissions regulations have done for the Griso's
1,100cc engine, however, so for the coming season the slickly
styled bike is fitted with a new motor, and despite following the
inevitable transverse-cylinder, 90-degree V-twin, air-cooled
format, it's considerably more sophisticated than before.
Importantly, the bike has gained 21 horsepower in the process, up
to 108bhp. Would this mean a concomitant loss of low-rev torque
to achieve it, so important to the Griso's character and
easy-riding nature? A switch from two to four valves per cylinder
- hence the Griso's 8v suffix - so often leads to a peakier power
delivery anyway, but there's no need to worry because the
replacement engine also gains capacity, up from 1,064cc to
1,151cc, achieved by lengthening the stroke and leaving the bore
alone.
As soon as you pull away, it's clear the low- and mid-range
torque are unaffected, and the engine feels much the same as
before in terms of how hard it drives, only there's a crisper,
livelier edge to it that improves the bike around town and lends
it a sportier feel on open roads. But it's not until you're
revving the motor hard - 6,000rpm is hard for a big twin of this
nature - that the power hike comes into effect, and at this point
the Guzzi kicks you up to and beyond its 7,500rpm peak. It's fast
enough to be exhilarating here, although the vibration levels
rise to intrude at times, and essentially it gives you an extra
dimension to the bike's performance, with no obvious
consequential loss.
There are other changes aside from the 563 new components in the
engine, which amounts to 75 per cent of the total, apparently.
The exceptionally wide bars of the first Griso are narrower but
still wide enough to take a little getting used to, while the
footrests are slightly higher and farther back and the seat is
reshaped to be more comfortable, which seems to work. There's a
new pearlescent-white colour in addition to the black, the front
discs are trendy wave-edged items - no real technical value but
they look interesting - and the silencer has an odd Siamese
appearance, allegedly to achieve a figure-eight end cross
section. Oh, and you also get some tacky
""8v"" stickers.
The rest is as it was, which means outstanding steering at low
and high speeds, not fast but precisely neutral and obedient, so
the bike sweeps and flows along twisty roads and around mountain
hairpins effortlessly, until you try to hustle it when those bars
ask for some muscular input. You could certainly go places on the
Griso as well as use it locally, although the 3.7-gallon tank
capacity is rather mean. The bike is well finished, though, and
Guzzi reliability is good these days, but the spares back-up is
still patchy. It looks great too, with the powerful curves of
that exhaust defining the left side, the mechanical muscle of oil
cooler, motor and transmission exposed on the right and the
slender tank draped atop the fat twin frame rails.
This is Guzzi - and bike design generally - at its best.
