1997 Bimota YB11 Super Leggera

Frame no. ZES1YB114VRZES023

Previewing at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Please contact [email protected] for scheduling.

Equipped with nothing less than the very best suspension and brakes, Bimotas have always been necessarily expensive but then, like George Brough, it was never the firm's intention to build anything compromised by budgetary restrictions. The last word in 1990s Italian superbike exotica, the Bimota YB11 Superleggera (Superlight) used one of Japan's finest engines, that of the Yamaha Thunderace, which was installed in the Rimini firm's trademark aluminium beam frame. Producing a claimed 131bhp in stock form, the Thunderace motor was fitted with Bimota's own less restrictive exhaust system, liberating a few more horsepower. Complementing this were some of the finest cycle parts available, including fully adjustable Paioli 51mm forks, fully adjustable Paioli shock, Brembo brakes, 17" Antera wheels and plentiful carbon fibre. At 183kgs (403lbs), the YB11 Superleggera weighed some 80lbs less than the Thunderace donor bike and its handling and performance were in a different league altogether.

In the late 1990s Bimota went through one of its periodic financial convulsions and production of the YB11 ended in 1999, although a second batch of bikes was completed later using stocks of existing parts.

The YB11 presented here travelled for a little more than 3,500 miles. The has been consigned from a well-known private collection in the NE. The bike was housed in a private Museum type setting along with a stable of historic single-seater race cars. Just like this Bimota, each bike from that collection represents the best example attainable at the time of purchase and appears as a fine grouping of bikes from the heyday of British and European motorcycle manufacture. Whilst some are suitable for the concours lawn, others are intended to be wound-up and ridden along sweeping country lanes - or on the racetrack!