FEAST your eyes on some motorcycle rarities at the Coffs Harbour Festival of Motorsports on Sunday 5 November.

Located at Park Beach Plaza, the motorcycle show features a set of three unique Bimota motorcycles, possibly the only time these three motorcycles have been exhibited at the one venue in Australia given that one model had only a production run of seven worldwide.

Event Coordinator Christopher Pearson told News Of The Area, “It’s a real first for our event to have such a rare collection including the final edition to grace the floor of the motorcycle show.

“Most people have probably never heard of the Bimota make, let alone seen this trio in one place, and locally sourced,” he added.

These three immaculate motorcycles are expected to cause a sensation when the event opens to the public at 10am on Sunday.

Christopher shared some of the history and specifications.

The Bimota DB1 was released to the world in 1985 and was the first Bimota powered with a Ducati engine.

The DB1 is now widely considered to be the most valuable Bimota produced in series production (not including one-offs, racing machines and HB1’s), and was the first model developed after the departure of legendary designer/engineer Massimo Tamburini, or Dr T as he is better known by Italian motorcycling enthusiasts.

The DB1 was created by the Giuseppe Morri and Federico Martini management team, with most work performed by Pier Luigi Marconi and Roberto Ugolini, the same creator of the even more rare Bimota Tesi.

At the request of Gianfranco Castiglioni, co-owner of Ducati with his brother Claudio, Ducati commissioned Bimota to design a new Ducati sports model.

Ducati paid Bimota 50 percent of the contract as a deposit, and Bimota designed the motorcycle through the prototype phase.

As the prototype stage neared complete, a pre-production meeting was held between Morri and the two Castiglioni brothers (Claudio and Gianfranco) to review and form agreement upon how the new bike would enter production.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you consider the outcome, Claudio Castiglioni and Giuseppe Morri did not like each other, and because of this Claudio cancelled the project.

The project was dead, and Ducati owned the design.

Hence, this became the first Bimota with a Ducati engine.

Morri however, had invested a lot into the project, he liked the design, and very much wanted to prove Claudio Castiglioni wrong.

Morri contacted Gianfranco and offered to return Ducati’s deposit if Bimota could then own the rights to their design, and Gianfranco agreed.

It was rudimentary that being the first Bimota powered by a Ducati engine, that it would become the DB1.

Bimota continued to develop and produce the DB1 and the rest as they say, is history.

Today the Bimota DB1 is considered one of most beautiful, successful, and most highly desired of all Bimotas ever produced.

The DB1SR is an even higher performance version of the original DB1.

Up-specced to four-piston front calipers, 41 mm carburetors, freer two-into-one exhaust and more radical cam shafts, only 153 SRs were produced between 1987 and 1989, and all painted in identical red livery.

Confusingly, most DB1SRs are labelled incorrectly on the side-fairings, displaying DB1RS, while some have DB1SR on the rear red racing patch.

The DB1SR can be compared to Ducati’s three high-spec F1 750 racing models, the Laguna Seca, Montjuich, and Santa Monica.

The DB1SR Serie Finale is similar in specification and style to the DB1SR but produced in far fewer numbers.

Produced at the request of the USA Bimota Club President, Sam Bernstein, just seven Serie Finale were produced 1989/90 using the last seven DB1 frames in existence.

Of the seven built, six were painted identically red with a green stripe; five were shipped to the USA, one to Japan, while one solitary Final Edition remained in Italy and was painted white; a special-order built for the owner of Rima Motorcycles, the official Bimota distributor in Naples.

By Andrea FERRARI