<p>MV Agusta race team manager turned motorcycle manufacturer Arturo Magni was one of life&rsquo;s achievers, a man with a passion for the sport and for two-wheeled design who made a massive contribution on both road and track to Italy&rsquo;s motorcycle heritage.</p>

- Alan Cathcart

Even if he hadn’t started building the streetbikes bearing his name 40 years ago at his home town of Samarate, northwest of Milan, Magni would still have been a legend in his lifetime, a backroom boy made famous by the serial success of the MV Agusta Grand Prix team whose leader he was. As supervisor of the small band of men responsible for the serial success enjoyed by Count Domenico Agusta’s two-wheeled Ferraris during their 26-year dominance of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, Arturo Magni was the driving force behind successive World Championships won by such racing legends as John Surtees, Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini and Phil Read.

During Magni’s reign as Direttore Sportivo charged with overseeing the entire operation of MV Agusta’s Reparto Corse, the red and silver ‘fire engines’ dominated the prestigious 500GP class for almost 30 years, even in the face of Honda’s challenge in the 1960s - until the FIM’s shortsighted noise regulations brought that era to a close. And when that happened, Arturo Magni took on another challenge, in becoming a motorcycle manufacturer in his own right.

Magni joined the fledgling MV Agusta team in 1950 as chief mechanic, and two years later Britain’s Cecil Sandford won the first of MV’s array of World Championships, in the 125cc class. In 1956 John Surtees won MV Agusta’s inaugural 500cc World title, and with the retirement of both Gilera and Moto Guzzi from racing, 1958 saw the start of an unparalleled 17 years of successive World titles in the 500GP class b