At first glance the Mandello looks not dissimilar to Guzzis from the past 50 or so years. The look is dominated, like all Guzzis, by the cylinder heads of the classic transversely mounted 90° V-twin motor but, for the first time, the V100 features liquid cooling.
The 1042cc twin is an all-new design. It produces a claimed 113bhp and although the combination of water cooling and lightweight internals promise to make it much more refined than air-cooled Guzzis of old, it will still have plenty of charm to it including that characteristic rocking from side to side at tickover, which only comes from transversely mounted motors.
Although there’s little like it on the market, the V100 Mandello can probably best be described as a sports tourer with perhaps the BMW R 1250 RS being its closest competitor.
Like the BMW and all other models in the Guzzi range, the V100 sports a low maintenance shaft drive. There are plenty of cool gadgets too, not least the shapeshifting fairing, or adaptive aero as Moto Guzzi describe it. The system features tank mounted flaps to adjust the air flow around the rider as speeds increase, and they work in conjunction with the riding modes and electrically adjustable windscreen. These flaps deploy fully to 30° in touring and rain modes, to keep the elements from the rider, but stay inactive in street and sports modes.
The V100 Mandello is the company’s new flagship model, introduced to celebrate 100 years of the brand and named after Mandello del Lario, the northern Italian town where Guzzis have been built since 1921. In addition to the fancy fairing, it’s got loads of other tech. Moto Guzzi is part of the Piaggio group, which also includes Aprilia, and the electronics wouldn’t look out of place on one of their superbikes. The base version costs £13,500, but there’s also an S model which, for an additional £2,250, swaps the standard Kayaba suspension for electronically controlled Ohlins units, heated grips, quickshifter, tyre pressure monitors and smartphone connectivity.
