Guy Webster’s 75cc DOHC Ceccato, winner of the AMA Hall of Fame Museum’s 2009 Concours d’Elegance
An extremely rare – as in the one and only – Ceccato 75 won the 2009 Concours d’Elegance held by the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum in conjunction with the museum’s annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Owned by Italian bike collector Guy Webster, the Circa-1954 Ceccato is believed the only survivor of five made by the Italian Ceccato company, and has been profiled in Motorcycle Classics.
Designed by Fabio Taglioni, the man who made Ducati famous with his desmodromic single and then V-twin engine design, Webster’s Ceccato was probably built in the early- to mid-1950s. Taglioni designed the jewel-like 75cc DOHC single in 1949 or perhaps 1950, selling the design to Ceccato before moving on to work with Mondial and later Ducati. The bike was previously housed in the Ceccato museum (Ceccato quit making motorcycles about 1963 but exists today as a design engineering firm), before Webster bought it.
Webster’s good friend Ron Mousouris, a well-known collector himself, displayed the bike for Webster at the Hall of Fame show. The concours was followed by the Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony, adding nine new members to its list of celebrated motorcycle personalities. This year’s inductees included pioneering offroad suspension developer Gilles Vaillancourt, Grand National dirt-track racer Chuck Palmgren, Honda and Kawasaki (among others) racing team manager Gary Mathers, safety and training advocate David Hough, National Enduro and ISDE champ Randy Hawkins, apparel company Fox Racing founder Geoff Fox, suspension king and FOX Racing Shox founder Bob Fox, motorcycle rights activist Mona Ehnes, and the late Robert Bates, founder of Bates Manufacturing, once one of the largest manufacturers and marketers of after-market motorcycle products in the U.S.
This was the first time for the museum to hold its ceremony and concours off-premise from the AMA campus in Pickerington, Ohio, where the museum is located, but judging from the event’s success this might be the start of a new formula for future AMA Hall of Fame events. – Richard Backus
