[ Ahead of its time ]
These days a high-rise bike on small sporty wheels is nothing out the ordinary. 33 years ago it made as much sense as hi-vis camouflage. If only we knew…
PIC: GILERA
Good ideas are only ever as good as their reception from a wider public. No matter how much early adopters may froth about step changes and new beginnings, if the lumpen mass market fails to respond to a new product, it’s largely all over.
Gilera’s Nordwest was a good idea, and a decent bike that presaged the production supermoto boom by 15 years. It was so ahead of the curve that supermoto was still called supermotard in France, where the dirt/tarmac sport had a fair following by the late 1980s.
Supermotard was the European offspring of Superbikers, which first appeared on US TV in 1979 as part of ABC’s Wide World Of Sport. The brew of motocross riders and road racers on dirt bikes (and XR750 Harleys) on asphalt and the loose stuff, with jumps thrown in, drew top riders and big audiences, until ABC canned it in 1985.
This seedling sport germinated in Europe, and by 1990 the Guidon d’Or event, held at Circuit Carole near Paris, boasted Eddie Lawson on the grid riding a Yamaha YZ490 among the regular runners. This was still a very niche discipline, yet it clearly had potential. The motocross machines looked great on 17-inch wheels with huge front brake discs, and a smattering of street replicas began to appear.
In 1991, before supermoto was even semi-officially a thing, the Gilera Nordwest arrived. The small Italian factory in Arcore had won the World 500cc Championship six times between 1950 and 1957 and had a steady domestic business going with lightweights. They’d introduced the handsome 492cc Saturno single café racer in 1988 to some acclaim, but the 558cc Nordwest was a huge conceptual leap.
The liquid-cooled DOHC single-cylinder engine was based on the factory’s RC600 which had won the Paris-Dakar production class. Cam drive was by belt, carburation via a twin-choke Teikei (one slide, one CV) and the 98 x 74mm unit produced 45bhp and 36 lb.ft. With three-spoke cast wheels and twin 270mm discs clamped by four-pot Grimeca calipers, the spine-framed device weighed 141kg (310lbs) dry. It could hit 110mph. It steered impeccably, with a steep 24º head angle and stubby 55-inch wheelbase. And hardly anyone bought one.
At £4595 it was relatively expensive for a single. A Honda CBR600 was just £5108. But, for all the CBR’s competence, the Nordwest was a blast of the future at fair money. That future was too distant for riders locked into sportsbike worship; those who might now extoll the virtues of light, nimble singles on fat rubber with top brakes.
The Nordwest wasn’t just ahead of its time. It was light years beyond what the market could even comprehend.
Mark Graham