Little more than two months after celebrating his 90th birthday, one of the most illustrious figures in Italy’s rich panoply of motorcycle history has passed away, with the death on December 2, 2015, at his home at Samarate northwest of Milan, of former MV Agusta team manager turned motorcycle manufacturer, Arturo Magni.
Even if he hadn’t started building the road-going motorcycles bearing his name almost 40 years ago, 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, the leader of which he was.
As supervisor of the small band of men responsible for Count Domenico Agusta’s two-wheeled Ferraris during their 26-year dominance of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, Arturo Magni was the driving force behind the copious world championships won by such acclaimed racing legends as John Surtees, Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini and Phil Read.
Read more in the March edition of TCM
