Big Bold ​​​​​​​Bager

Moto Guzzi have released a new model in their California family, MGX-21 Flying Fortress by name. We rode it from Milan to Moto Guzzi’s Mandello base and back.

- Roland Brown

THERE’S A GOOD REASON WHY this new model in Moto Guzzi’s California family is the MGX-21 Flying Fortress: a “bagger” with an American name, batwing fairing, gigantic 21-inch diameter front wheel, and a blend of carbon-fibre bodywork and red highlights that help make it one of the most visually striking cruisers of recent years.

Guzzi are desperate to make an impression in the American market, where you might think Italy’s oldest bike firm would be pretty successful, given the Stateside popularity of big, air-cooled V-twins with a heritage theme. On the contrary, Italy’s oldest bike firm is so little known across the Atlantic, even among owners of American V-twins, that US sales accounted for less than 10 per cent of last year’s modest total sale of 8,000.

The MGX-21 has been created primarily in an attempt to boost Guzzi’s presence and profile, especially in the States. Like the now four-year-old California and its Eldorado and Audace spin-offs, it was designed in Pasadena, California, at the Piaggio design studio headed by Miguel Galluzzi. Guzzi say the ‘X’ in its name stands for ‘eXperimental’, and that the ‘21’ refers not only to the front wheel diameter but to 1921, the marque’s first year of production.

The MGX seemed pretty experimental when the radical bagger was unveiled as a concept at the EICMA show in Milan in 2014. Almost two years later it’s entering production looking almost identical, following positive feedback at US customer clinics. Further American influence is clear in the ‘Flying Fortress’ name, inspired by Boeing’s B-17 bomber from World War II.