Everyone’s favourite oddball extinct European adventure bike is coming back! Errrr, no, not the Cagiva Elefant… we mean the Moto Guzzi Stelvio.
This big-bore Italian ADV took its time getting to the Canadian market. Introduced to the Euro market for 2007, it didn’t show up here in The Frozen North for a few years. When we got the 2012 NTX version of the bike as a CMG tester, Bondo and Larry both liked the machine, but found things that could be improved. As Bondo put it: “The Stelvio has so much potential to be a great adventure tourer, but the Valpolicella boys had better get back to the drawing board, because, although the basic platform is great, the details are somewhat lacking.”
Larry said pretty much the same thing in their Fall Tour review. The buying public seemed to agree; many riders enjoyed the Stelvio’s usable power and handling, but a collection of quirks, oddities and missing pieces kept it from being a major player in the ADV world. Sure, we did see one or two show up at the Fundy Adventure Rally every year, but they were unusual.
Now Moto Guzzi is reportedly bringing the Stelvio back, introducing it the same way that it introduced the Aprilia Tuareg 660: With a sneaky, unannounced display at the EICMA show in Milan. This time around, the Guzzi crew had a photo of the Stelvio Pass on display, with a couple of spoked wheels sitting next to it and the tagline “Coming Soon.”
Maybe not as fun as the show where they hid the Tuareg in a fake jungle display, but the message is the same: There’s a new adventure bike coming. Alas, this time we know nothing about the new machine, except the name and the fact that the spoked wheelset indicates some manner of off-road capability.
While Moto Guzzi is best known for its big-bore transverse V-twins, it would be a wild and radical move to build this new bike around the Tuareg 660 parallel twin powerplant. Actually, it would be the sensible thing to do. That doesn’t mean we expect to see it happen, though …
