Motobi Motorcycles Imperiale 1960
In 1948, a family dispute led Giuseppe Benelli to leave the family business in Pesaro that had grown to make a name for itself since its beginnings in 1921 and start his own motorcycle factory over the road.
Giuseppe’s new company was Moto B Pesaro and its products carried a large ‘B’ logo on the tank. The company became known as Motobi in 1954. The first of Giuseppe’s motorcycles were two-strokes on which the egg-shaped engine featured horizontal cylinders and cooling fins, a layout that became a Motobi trademark that was carried over to the first four-stroke engines in 1955. Those pushrod-operated, overhead-valve 125cc and 175cc engines, which preceded the similarly-configured Aermacchi engines by a year, were designed by Piero Prampolini and carried the name Catria.
Giuseppe died in 1957 and his sons, Luigi and Marco, took over the task of keeping the company successful in the face of improving economic conditions in Italy and the arrival of affordable small cars. However, they struggled to do so and in 1961 the company was absorbed into the Benelli family business, which became the Gruppo Benelli-Motobi. The Catria engine was enlarged to 200cc in 1963 and 250cc in 1966, and remained in production until 1973.