Born October 18, 1934 in Pesaro, eldest son of a peasant family, Giancarlo Morbidelli died at the age of 85, in his hometown, after having influenced an entire generation of pilots and enabling four of them to obtain the world title between 1975 and 1977.
As a young man, Giancarlo Morbidelli attended a technical school and, at the end of his studies, he began working in a mechanical factory before creating his own company producing special machines for woodworking.
Thanks to his great intuition and his great industrial and technical capacities, he managed to make his factory one of the largest and most famous in the sector and experienced rapid growth, until it had more than 300 employees.
But Giancarlo's greatest passion has been motorcycles, since his adolescence, and he has not forgotten it.
To promote the Morbidelli brand throughout the world, he decided at the end of the 60s to launch into the design and manufacture of racing motorcycles: these enjoyed great success in the 70s, with numerous victories on the world circuits and the conquest of four world championships between 1975 and 1977 at the hands of Paolo Pileri, Pier Paolo Bianchi and Mario Lega.
In the early 1990s, Giancarlo decided to sell his thriving business to devote himself entirely to his great passion for motorcycles. He began planning and assembling a small series of 850 cc motorcycles with a V3 engine.
Giancarlo Morbidelli produced competition motorcycles from the 50cc to the 500cc, even if his 125cc were those which were the most successful and the dream of all the pilots of the time.
In 1999, Giancarlo, who had collected vintage motorcycles since he was very young, opened a museum with a covered area of approximately 3 square meters and containing approximately 000 motorcycles.
The museum was in Pesaro until last year, where it was possible to see and admire the beautiful collection. Unfortunately, the family decided last year to close the museum and put the entire collection up for auction.
Giancarlo Morbidelli, a gentleman in the motorcycle world, died Monday February 10.
