That’s what Jim Bush from White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, did — built his own MV Agusta. After transplanting a 910cc engine from an F4 found on eBay into his 750cc Brutale, Jim found the redundant 750cc engine was taking up too much room in his garage. Jim has a bad MV habit, owning a 125cc Café bike and a Chicco scooter as well as the Brutale, and he has a particular passion for the Magni-styled MV street bikes of the 1980s. Magni still sells the bodywork, tank and pipes for these machines, so the next step was obvious.
Bush ordered Magni bodywork components and set to work designing and building his own frame to suit the 750cc engine. The bike wears Triumph forks (machined for period appearance) connected to a four-leading-shoe Grimeca front brake and hub. At the rear, a Ducati drum runs on a swingarm Bush designed and fabricated himself. The gas tank was cut and reworked to accept the F4’s fuel pump, while most of the electrics are also from the F4. There are dozens of Bush’s touches that personalize the bike and make it more practical.
The result is spectacular, a bike that literally turns heads as onlookers try to work out what it is. It looks for all the world like a Magni chain-drive MV until you get closer and spot the modern engine lurking behind the fairing and the digital instrument panel. With at least twice the horsepower of a Seventies 750, it really flies, too. And then there’s the howl from the four Magni pipes, which echoes the magical high-rev rip made by Domenico Agusta’s “fire engine” race bikes of the same era.
Read more about Agusta in Last of the Breed: MV Agusta 850SS.
