As the poet might have said, ‘if variety is the spice of invention, play on.’ Armed only with a handful of euros and a bottle of red wine, Steven Myatt is awed by what our continental cousins got up to on two wheels.

Consider, if you will, the Aermacchi Chimera – and when was the last time anyone invited you to do that? Have you ever heard of this bike, let alone ever seen one? Well, here’s one: The Chimera was a very elegant, highly streamlined bike, as you can see from the photo here, and was sold by Aermacchi through the late ’50s and early ’60s as ‘la moto fuoriserie con le linea di domani’ – and who can disagree with that? Depends on whether they can speak Italian or not. TB
The bike was originally sketched out by the aristocratic car designer, Count Mario Revelli, at the very beginning of ’56. He envisaged something sleek, fully-faired and extremely stylish. He handed the rough drawings – and apparently they were pretty rough drawings – to Aermacchi’s technical supremo, Alfredo Bianchi, who was also more of a car man, having only recently moved to the company from Alfa Romeo.
Bianchi was under orders to get his boss’s whimsy into production as soon as possible – which he did, though getting all those pressings right must have been a nightmare. Some are steel, some are alloy, and the whole tank and seat unit comes off in one piece and is only held on with two bolts.
The body panel system was quite ingenious, and everything came away in seconds; air was sucked into the squared-off section ahead of the horizontally-aligned cylinder to provide cooling, and then that line was continued right the way along the bike to the chainguard. The section above, painted a contrasting colour, began with the horn and ended at the back with the rear light and number plate. The headlamp was fully faired into the fork tops and ‘bars with a nacelle. The only slight hiccup in the design process, for me at least, was the front mudguard, which was slung from the bottom yoke and therefore sat very high off the wheel.

Top : Derny pinned their hopes on this futuristic commuter bike.
Above: .sadly to no avail.

Along with their compatriots Vespa, Aermacchi were trying to make motorcycling more civilised; cleaner, quieter and altogether a pastime more in tune with the new-found dynamism of post-war Italy.
The single-cylinder engine was slung under the single down tube, which ran from the headstock to a short pivoted section below the seat, very low down in fact, with a shock absorber above and the swing arm stretching out from below. A bit like Harley’s Softail system, but upside down, really fascinating.
The Chimera was a full two-seater and apparently rode like a dream. The 175cc model put out 13hp and was capable of 65mph. Later on a 250cc option was also available.

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