The Red Thread Comes a Full Circle

‘It’s from the beginning: my father, MV Agusta, the race department, three cylinders, Agostini. It links them all together.’ That’s how Giovanni Magni, Arturo Magni’s younger son, described the Magni Filo Rosso. We rode it on a highway alongside the Malpensa airport runway in Milan.

- Roland Brown

THE GRAND PRIX replica experience doesn’t get much more vivid than this, especially for those captivated by GP racing’s previous four stroke era of the 1960's and early 70's. I’m accelerating past traffic on a road bordering the Malpensa airport of Milan, crouched over the long, red petrol tank of an MV Agusta whose high revving three-cylinder engine is assaulting my ears with its barely silenced scream.

On the other side of the airport’s tall wire fence, the empty runway and access road look inviting. As I cane the Magni Filo Rosso down the highway alongside, I’m reminded of Arturo Magni, the former MV Agusta race team manager who died last year aged 90, telling how his riders, including Agostini and Hailwood, used to speed-test their factory race bikes on Malpensa’s long straights when the all-conquering team was based nearby at Cascina Costa.

Half a century later, it’s a thrill to be at speed in Malpensa astride an MVengined triple that looks unmistakably like one of those mighty factory “Gallarate fire engines”. But this is a street bike, the Magni Filo Rosso, powered by a 675-cc powerplant from the modern Brutale 800, and designed and produced by Giovanni and Carlo Magni, Arturo’s engineer sons.

Filo Rosso means “red thread” in Italian, and the name is appropriate. The phrase refers not to a tachometer red-line, but to the Italian concept of a thread that joins historical points. ‘The Filo Rosso touches all our family’s history,’ Giovanni, the younger brother, had said before I left his workshop. ‘It’s from the beginning: my father, MV Agusta, the race department, three cylinders, Agostini. It links them all together.’