TREASURES OUT OF OUR VMOL ARCHIVES...

Italian born motorcycle legend Alessandro Anzani died in 1956, age 79, seconds after he asked a nurse to please not shut the window of his hospital room. A motorcycle was driving by and the nurse wanted to close the window to avoid the hard sound of the engine troubling the very sick patient. But Anzani did not want her to do that, “I like the sound of engines”. However, the little energy it took to ask her that was to much for his ailing body. Very shortly after he said these last words he passed his last breath. Maybe he wanted to move on that way, accompanied by the sound that always made his heart to beat.

Frozen in time, Anzani initially became famous for his motorcycles that featured very lightly built twin and triple cylinder engines, they were immediately successful in racing. These bikes also raced successfully on the French boardtracks, the country where Anzani moved to in 1900. Motorcycling’s early racing days were simply incredible, yet today absolutely forgotten is the impulse on the wooden velodromes, or boardtracks. The first motorcycles were bicycles with engines, so it made sense they also raced on the velodromes. In an era where combustion engines were not yet accepted on the European mainland (apparently they had a tendency to turn the milk in cows sour; ánd they scared horses), it was also an accepted arena for the first battles in motorcycle racing.

The Anzani lightweight motorcycles were absolute works of art. They delivered more power then any other motorcycle of that era with the same cylinder capacity. Alessandro Anzani was able to build these machines because of income he generated by manufacturing stayer motorcycles. Yesterday, I happened to come across a postcard in our archives that is now 107 years old, from 1904. It shows an Anzani twin cylinder stayer motorcycle. I believe it must have been one of his very, very earliest products as his more regular motorcycle production did not start up until 1907. Machines like this formed the bread and butter of the company at the time, and made it possible for him to expand his advanced and incredible engineering exploits further and further.

This early Anzani was truly gigantic and must have been almost impossible to ride. The drag behind these gigantic machines surely must have helped the bicyclist gain more momentum. Or maybe the bicyclist did not need any pedal effort at all as the pull of the inlet tract alone must have been stupendous! But no matter what, there is absolutely no bigger contrast with Anzani’s early motorcycle racers imaginable then the Anzani stayer motorcycles of "yore"! Ivar de Gier

A third generation historian and journalist born in Holland, Ivar de Gier and his wife Amy operate A. Herl Inc; one of the most comprehensive motorcycle image archives in the world. Admired and respected on a international level, Ivar has served as a consultant for VMOL since 2009.