"Five Very Rare Italian Trials Machines" from the early  Eighties.

From the Marco Rampinelli Collection.

This is the designer of these machines Alessio Bartolini. along with the first two machines his friend Carlo Camarlinghi...

All photos are from Justyn Norek and are his copyright.

The story of these machine is to follow later by Justyn...

But see for your self the guy knew what he was doing.

This is the Panda that Alessio is riding above. 1978-88...

And the other side. More information Later.The first two machines are down the page.. first "Titania" and then second Ancillotti...

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So moving back to his home town of Florence in fact a village just outside named Montramito, Alessio taking his old "Titania" bike home with him decided he would have just one more go at designing or upgrading the Ancillotti machine. He had met two old friends in the village that were ex fishermen and wanted to build their own sail boats to sell, so set up a small factory in an old dwelling...in a quarry,  after helping them Alessio, thought this would be an opportunity to set up their own trials machine manufacturing unit, and build a batch of 30 machines with redesigned frames and using the available still Franco Morini engine unit. The glass-fibre parts could be handled by his now partners in the company they had set up Centromoto, but they would need a name for the bike. After a pub lunch they had come up with the name Panda Bear but shortened it to just Panda the bear dropped for the 220 cc numbering to compete with the Fantic 200 logo. Frames were to be built near Milan and all other components had been sorced from Bologna,  but to get the needed homologation of the machines they needed a factory that would come up to scratch to get the certificate... A move to an old car wash building solved this problem so production began. One of the prototypes was sent off to a German friend for assessment, he was a Suzuki dealer in  Germany and was also a keen trials enthusiast, his name Siegfried Schulbe. After testing the Panda he said he thought it needed a bigger capacity engine, Alessio asked  the Franco Morini factory if they could help, but with so few engine sales it was not worth the time to develop modifications. So Alessio used parts from other engine manufacturers to try and achieve this by himself, but the engines still lacked bottom end torque and porting problems... The German Siegfried tried to solve it as well, by constructing bigger air box and also exhaust... a write up in a German magazine also came to this same conclusion. The final straw for the Centromoto company came when Fiat motor company had decided to use the name Panda on their new small car, and unlike Centromoto had registered the name, and wanted the small Italian company to stop using it ...so Panda Motorcycles came to an abrupt end.

Alessio built one final machine the Valenti below...

"Marco Barca" aboard the Panda we think...

Now for the next model.

The Valenti...

The Valenti...using the Tau 310cc engine. only one it seems was built. 

More information and story about this Valenti machine later...

Superb old shot before the digital revolution, of a Panda during competition...

And the "TITANIA"....The first trials bike to be built in Italy it is said...

The "Titania". More later.

This is the machine named  the "Titania" that Alessio Bartolini and trials riding friend Carlo Camarlinghi designed and put together first, this was said to be the first trials bike to be built in Italy in 1976... this machine caught the eye of motorcycle company named Ancillotti who Alessio was their motorcycle photographer... Mr Ancillotti had looked at the "Titania" bike and asked the two designers to work for them and build the first Ancillotti machine...

Ancillotti then built a batch of one hundred of these 125 machines, and also set up a team of young riders to ride and promote the bikes, cultimating in winning the 1977 IWF 125 class.

However these Ancillotti machines were not a match for the up and coming Fantic machines...and the small Ancillotti company did not have the money to further develop the machine, so lost the sales to the Fantic company bikes ... So Alessio left the company and moved back to Florence...   

Look at the short wheel base on this "Titania"...

Another nice period shot of the Panda machine...Enjoy the above.

Now the "ancillotti"...

 The"ancillotti"... with Franco Morini 125 engine...

This is the second machine that Alessio Bartolini and Carlo Camarlinghi designed and built, the prototype for the Ancillotti company and after testing the prototype with a team of trials riders, Ancillotti went ahead and built a batch of one hundred of these little 125 machines.. 

Photo Courtesy ebay...

Here is a good example of the machine that Ancillotti had to compete with for sales,  and we all know that the little red Fantic 200 trial  won the day in great numbers ...

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The full stories about these machines is to be sent by Justyn Norek and has soon as it is, I will update the page for you.

from Justyn Norek...

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Much More Later.with more information...

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