Raised Eyebrow Bike of the Week: the Bimota Tera

    Have you ever heard of the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Bimota? Most people have never even heard of one, let alone have seen one in person. Bimota is a 50 year old Italian motorcycle manufacturer that specializes in building very interesting motorcycles of their own design that use engines from other makers. They are considered a manufacturer and not a custom bike shop as their output numbers hover between niche and bespoke. Also, they have a pretty decent racing pedigree with some level of racing success on the world stage with wins in older world championship displacements. 

    As Bimota uses other engines from other makers, they have come up with a simple, yet elegant naming convention for their various model designations. They take the first initial letter of the maker's engine. The second initial is a "B" for Bimota. Lastly they add a number for the sequential number of models using that maker's engine. A Bimota SB1 is a bike with a Suzuki TR500 engine from the late 70's and is Bimota's first model using a Suzuki engine. Pretty clever!

    In 2019 Kawasaki bought a 49% share of Bimota and as you would expect Bimota has been using Kawasaki engines in their latest models. The most recent being the Tera pictured in this Adventure Rider article where I first saw it.

Bimoto Terra (Image from Adventure Rider by Bimota)

    This is supposedly an ADV style bike, even though I find it to have more sport touring style. There definitely is a BMW-esque appearance on the face of the bike. The hard ADV panniers also scream "Adventure" though hard panniers seem to have waned in fashion these days. The two things that make me raise an eyebrow to this bike are the front suspension and the use of the supercharged Kawasaki H2 engine. 

    I don't know if I'd ever take a bike like this onto anything less than the most immaculate of paved European mountain roads. However with a swing-arm front suspension and a 200 HP supercharged engine, I'd love to swing a leg over this bike. Alas, my lottery checks for the Powerball drawing I never bought haven't magically been deposited into my account so I'll have to settle for pictures like most of us. Enjoy the read.

Mat