Winning motorcycles from the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este 2012

The Concorso d’Eleganza, a gathering of some of the finest vintage and classic cars in the world has been running since 1928, but it was only last year that the motorcycle category was added to it as the Concorso di Motociclette. This year, the motorcycle kind witnessed strong participation with some exotic and rare classic motorcycles lining up at the event. “The Concorso d’Eleganza for cars can look back over a long tradition, and for BMW, with its extensive history as a motorcycle manufacturer, it was only logical to expand the Concorso to include classic motorcycles,” said Karl Baumer, President of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este and Director of BMW Group Classic.

Heading the pack was the legendary BMW 500 Kompressor, as the parade traveled from Tremezzo to Cernobbio complete with police escorts. Out of all the entries participating in the 2012 Concorso for motorcycles, the elite jury, made up of some of the biggest names in the motorcycle world, voted for the best machine based of several parameters like the general standard of restoration achieved and the closeness of each model to its original condition as well as the overall aesthetic appeal.

The thirty entries were classified in five different classes at the 2012 Concorso, and out of each class one winner was closen. Below is the list of class-wise motorcycle winners at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este 2012:

Class A - Roaring Twenties

Winner: Koehler-Escoffier Tourisme, 1925

Entrant: Michael Paula (A)

Class B - Stylish Thirties

Winner: Zündapp K 800, 1934

Entrant: Giulio Caimi (I)

Class C - Swinging Fifties

Winner: Maico Taifun 400, 1955

Entrant: Karl-Heinz Rehkopf (D)

Class D - Launch into the Future

Winner: BSA Rocket 3, 1968

Entrant: Heribert Corn (A)

Class E - Racing through the Decades

Winner: Gilera Rondine 500, 1939

Entrant: Museo Piaggio Pontedera (I)

This year’s jury for the Concorso di Motociclette was once again made up of four high-calibre experts:

• Carlo Perelli from Milan is a doyen of the Italian motorcycle press. He started work as a reporter, photographer and test rider with Italy’s oldest motorbike magazine, Motociclismo, in the 1950s.

• Hugo Wilson concentrated solely on modern motorcycles in his early days as a journalist. Indeed, it was only when he started writing books that he came into closer contact with motorcycle history. The Englishman has for many years been the editor of the world’s oldest and most widely read classic motorcycle magazine, Classic Bike.

• Paul d’Orleans from San Francisco started out as an interior designer, before turning his hobby into a career and writing about classic motorcycles for a wide range of media.

• Raffaele Zaccagnini heads up Husqvarna Motorcycles’ Centrostile design centre and has been using his designer’s eye to lend sporty motorcycles their unmistakable appearance for over 10 years now.