Back in April, Kevin Dunworth of Loaded Gun Customs ran into Miguel Galluzzi at the Handbuilt Show in Austin and asked him to come to Los Angeles to serve as a judge for the inaugural Golden Bolt Motorcycle Show.
For those of you who don’t know who Miguel Galluzzi is, let me clue you in. He is the designer of the iconic Ducati Monster, the Moto Guzzi California 1400, and the Aprilia Dorsoduro, just to name a few.
Additionally, he is currently running Piaggio’s Advanced Design Center in Pasadena, California. Not only that, he is a lifelong motorcyclist and a heck of a nice guy.
I had a chance to sit down with Galluzzi for about 15 minutes during the Golden Bolt to talk about motorcycles and the industry in general. His insights were illuminating.
Galluzzi’s enthusiasm for being at a motorcycle show was clearly evident. He started by telling me, “it’s always fun to be around people who make their own bikes. That’s what I actually enjoy; seeing everything that is going on.”
“It’s great as a motorcycle designer to be around people who are passionate about what they do.”
After talking about the Golden Bolt (which he really seemed to enjoy), I asked Galluzzi what his favorite genre of motorcycle is, and which type speaks to his design ethos.
“That’s a difficult thing to say. I think the best bike to me, it doesn’t matter what type, it’s the bike that tells me, let’s go and go. Something that speaks to you.”
He continued, “I grew up with dirt bikes and motocross in the 70s, but then I went into the streets, and I have a tradition in my family for road racing. It’s everything that speaks to me to say, let’s see what I can do.”
As our conversation continued, Galluzzi said he was happy to see a younger crowd at the show, which led me to ask him about how he felt about the current state of the motorcycle industry. He looked at me with a smile and a chuckle and said, “How much time do you have?”
“The industry right now is doing not very well. Not because there are no people riding motorcycles, but it’s a hangover of many decades of a lot of things that for a long time went very well.”
“You know, we were discussing the other day with the people from Italy who work for Piaggio, that the best-selling bike in Italy for the last six months is mostly the R1200GS (BMW).”
“And if you talk to the people that have been buying that bike for the last ten years, it’s because they think it’s a good investment, not because they need a motorcycle.”
Galluzzi explained, “And they are not young, because in order to buy that bike, you have to have some money. Then, suddenly, there is this Benelli that’s Chinese produced, that’s almost a quarter of the price of the other (the R1200GS).”
“So there is something going on in the industry, but I think we’re in the phase of denial, going, oh you know we have a problem and we have to fix it.”
“From my point of view in ten years, we’re going to be in a completely different place with completely different people. We were talking with some people in Austin about how the kids who started in this business ten years ago, when they were twenty-five, are now thirty-five or forty, so they are not a kid anymore.”
“I’m more concerned about the ten-year-old right now. For example, last year in Sturgis, they had this show, and it was the most inspiring show for me in a long time, because you saw seventeen-year-old kids doing stuff with their hands, so it’s a good example to bring home.”
“So, we are not in a good place, but I see the whole industry moving forward thanks to things like this (the Golden Bolt), because they’re getting young kids involved, and that’s going to bring us to another position.”
As we continued our conversation, we talked about how young people today in the US aren’t brought up doing things with their hands as often as they used to be, but Galluzzi sees this as a bigger problem.
“That’s the problem. It’s not only in the US, but also in the developed countries of the world; they’ve been losing that too.”
“When I was moving from Honda to Cagiva in 1987 or 1988, the people that were running the Paris-Dakar department, the shop, were two guys.”
“They used to produce four to six bikes by themselves, and those bikes would go and win Dakar. So that kind of thing is what we’re talking about. Everybody right now is not getting the satisfaction of understanding that we can do anything we want with our hands, not just look at their phone.”
Looking towards the future, Galluzzi stated, “It’s just a matter of time. That’s why this show is important. We’re talking about kids who are twenty to thirty who will understand that you can do it.”
“And being here and to see them do it, whatever, it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes because you are doing it. Doing it and making things that didn’t exist before. And that’s the magic!”
After discussing the state of the industry, I asked Galluzzi what makes a good motorcycle? “This is very difficult to answer” he said.
“As a designer I enjoy the harmonious proportions. My aesthetic starts from that. But it doesn’t matter how beautiful it is. We can get this emotion on paper, but then we have to transfer that into reality.”
“Good design takes a lot of effort. Harmonious aesthetics takes a lot of work. Make it simple, make it clear to everybody. That’s why I enjoy what I do.”
As we wrapped up our discussion, we talked a little about Galluzzi’s most famous creation, the Ducati Monster. What was basically a parts-bin special, turned into something magical that celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year.
I asked if there would ever be another Monster, to which he replied, “I’ll tell you a story. In 1991 or 1992, when we presented the Monster in Cologne, most of the people who saw the bike thought it was very futuristic, which to me was just a motorcycle.”
“We were getting away from all the plastics. We made something that was easy to understand and simple to live with. But at the end of the day for me, it was just a basic motorcycle.”
“As I said, simple designs are going to come many, many times during your life. The Monster was not the first naked bike of the time, but it got together a lot of things that people were thinking of in the moment, that myself as a motorcyclist had in mind.”
“The NineT got the imagination of the people. That bike, I always said, if the price would have been lower maybe was another Monster, but it was too expensive; that was the only problem.”
“The Monster had the advantage of being affordable to anyone. And that’s what we actually need right now.
After fifteen minutes our time was up, but I could have sat there for hours talking about bikes.
His enthusiasm is clearly evident and his efforts to serve as a mentor to the next generation of designers and builders is laudable.
I hope the next generation continues the passion that Galluzzi still shows today.
Photo: © 2018 Andrew Kohn / Asphalt & Rubber – All Rights Reserved
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