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Driving report Benelli Tornado Tre Limited Edition
Everything very different
Away from the monotony, out of the shackles of mass production: MOTORRAD drove the 36,000 euro Benelli Tornado Tre Limited Edition as a world exclusive.
The green-black hisses hoarse from their titanium silencers, the acrid smell of evaporating assembly grease penetrates the nose. No doubt this machine is brand new, just assembled. Benelli importer Ronald Marz is proud of the new baby, lets the ultra-short-stroke three-cylinder engine warm up with short bursts of gas, the dry clutch disks rattle like a race.
It took a long, very long time to get the first one B.enelli were assembled. Company owner Andrea Merloni actually wanted to start production in spring 2001. Internal difficulties and restructuring caused delays. There was also a lot of technical problems. It has only been really stable since the engine had a conventional firing order. Originally designed by engineer Riccardo Rosa with a Big Bang firing order ?? all three cylinders are ignited during one crankshaft revolution ?? was rejected again. With the conventionally igniting triple, the tornado now sounds like a Triumph Daytona, only significantly wilder, more uncouth, more biting. And Signore Rosa has another job in the meantime; Pierluigi Marconi, the former chief designer of Bimota and creator of beautiful machines like the DB4 and SB8K, got his. A capable man.
The pull on the clutch lever puts an end to the noise, the first gear slips gently into its detent, the Benelli pushes off with a sonorous sound. Although a lot of things about this machine are different from others, you immediately feel at home. Sitting position, levers, instruments, everything fits. Even the completely unorthodox shaped tank doesn’t bother us at all. Only the bulbous shape of the cooling air ducts under the tank takes getting used to. Cooling air shafts? Yes, you read that correctly, the Benelli is going completely different here. The cooler sits above the rear wheel, the fans, which are supposed to extract the warm air when the car is stationary, are in the rear. Mighty carbon fiber ducts direct the cooling air drawn from the front to the radiator. The space gained in front of the engine can move it forward and thus optimize the weight distribution. The machine should also be narrower. Let’s see how the unusual solution works.
Of course, you don’t want to expect too much from the brand new engine for the first few kilometers. But it can turn up to 7000 rpm. The triplet slurps throatily from the airbox when the three throttle valves are opened, but instead of a hurricane, the 900 provides at most a stiff breeze. In addition, the coordination of the injection is not yet convincing. Hard load changes and a clear acceleration gap at 5000 rpm show that work still needs to be done on fine-tuning the engine. The injection system supplied by Sagem, as with Triumph, requires meticulous programming. In addition, the dry clutch makes problems, its pressure point moves. According to Benelli, it will be changed again.
The chassis, on the other hand, behaves almost perfectly. As if by itself, the Benelli glides in a lean position, steers itself incredibly direct and stable, even through difficult corner passages. The front wheel seems to be rolling on an invisible track, which feels a lot like MV Agusta. The frame was designed in a very unusual way. Four steel tubes connect the steering head and swing arm mounting made of light metal cast. The whole thing is glued and screwed. Airplanes are also glued.
The Ohlins fork impresses with its well-known good quality, does its job in a clean, appealing and routine manner. Even when braking hard, which is child’s play with the easy-to-dose Brembos, each with four individual pads per pair of pliers, the front wheel guidance doesn’t show any weakness, but simply puts everything away. Great. The shock absorber is also great, but is at most a bit tight in terms of damping.
The rings of the large ’88 pistons have surely worn in by now, and the plain bearings have fitted in. So gas! Show me what you’ve got! Where is the storm He comes! From 8000 rpm something goes, from 10000 rpm something really goes. The triplet rotates up to 11800 revolutions with a roar. Then the limiter gently comes into play. The next gear, the same throttle position, wonderful how the 900er pushes. And how it sounds! Excitingly rough and robust.
Well, the 150 horses listed in the homologation don’t seem to be fully grown yet. The Benelli engine still lacks something tasty. Due to their sonorous sound, three-cylinders suggest less power than is actually available. But the tornado is not as good as the latest 1000s. In terms of feeling, it also has a relatively long translation and carries a relatively large amount of flywheel mass on the crankshaft. But why want to keep up with the thousands? The four great Japanese have been there for years. And the Italian manufacturer has already tried it? unsuccessful. In the seventies, when Benelli was building Honda engines. The power is always enough for the country road.
The cooling system works flawlessly. Sure, we haven’t been able to check it out at 35 degrees in the shade in the Stuttgart rush hour. With pleasantly mild temperatures in March, the cooling never got into critical areas. The engine was also not yet able to let off steam during the test drives on the motorway. But Benelli had just spent two weeks on the test track in Nardo, where the three-cylinder was certified to be stable and a top speed of 274 km / h, which was still too low.
If there is still a lack of top performance, top design is definitely what you get with the Tornado. Except for the rear swing arm, which is a bit reminiscent of Aprilia RSV mille, there are only independent solutions. The headlights arranged one above the other, footrests with the finely crafted Benelli logo, the rear light beautifully integrated into the rear, details everywhere that surprise even the most spoiled motorcyclist’s eye. It’s a shame that the fan wheels in the rear are no longer painted yellow. The paint could not withstand the stress. Now they are black, and Ronald Marz philosophizes whether it is not possible to restore the originality that has been lost with two small lamps. In any case, a number of technical and optical solutions are unprecedented in the large-scale production of motorcycles. The Benelli Tornado is different. Completely different.
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