5 is a really uncommon variety of cylinders for a motorbike engine, and essentially the most acquainted examples graced track-only prototypes that introduced world championships in two eras to Honda. If storied Italian model MV Agusta wished to focus public consideration firmly on hopes for the longer term, asserting {that a} five-pot engine would propel a recent vary of bikes can be a neat strategy to do it.
That MV had such a motor below improvement was implied mutely this month in Milan on the world’s largest bike commerce present, EICMA 2025, the place a peculiarly formed powerplant was displayed in a clear case. No press equipment accompanied it, though some magazines extracted remark from MV individuals on the occasion.
The corporate has since launched a top level view of the engine’s structure and a abstract of the way it would possibly use it. Other than producing a second publicity splash 10 days after the primary, the main points affirm what Italian outlet Moto.it was advised verbally on the present: the brand new design certainly used 5 cylinders, it might be made in displacements starting from 850cc to 1150cc, it’d produce as a lot as 240 hp (179 kW), and it could debut in a brand new mannequin some years from now.
Honda’s first five-cylinder and arguably its most well-known was a transverse, inline design, the RC149 that received the 125cc road-racing world championship in 1966, with a 21,000 rpm rev ceiling and an eight-speed gearbox. Its different 5 was a V5, the 990cc RC211V, with which Valentino Rossi received the primary two MotoGP crowns contested below new guidelines encouraging four-strokes. The MV Agusta five-cylinder is totally different once more: neither inline nor a V however a quadrato – a sq. – as the corporate kinds it, even whether it is extra precisely a trapezoid.
The motor MV showcased is actually a transverse parallel twin driving behind a parallel triple and utilizing a single cylinder head, with intakes positioned between the 2 cylinder banks and exhausts on the surface. It seems to make use of three camshafts, one devoted to every set of exhaust valves and a 3rd between them that will function all inlet valves. Every cylinder financial institution turns its personal crankshaft, “in ‘U’ configuration” – no matter meaning, because the German journal Motorrad observes wryly. Maybe the bottom of the U is a gear system connecting the cranks at one finish.
However the mass of the additional crank, MV Agusta claims the engine will weigh lower than 132 lb (60 kg), which might make it considerably lighter than the 142-lb (65-kg) Desmosedici Stradale within the Ducati Panigale V4. Shaving weight, the oil pump and water pump might be electrical.
An eye fixed-opening facet of the claimed specification, presumably for the most important model, is the utmost torque output, which is represented as “astonishing” and is available in at 135 Nm, or simply below 100 lb-ft. Ducati, by means of comparability, claims solely 121 Nm (89 lb-ft) for its marginally smaller V4.
Additional, the square-five’s torque peak is claimed to reach at simply 8,500 rpm, whereas peak energy arrives north of 16,000. That will justify the manufacturing facility’s description of the design as an “engineering masterpiece”, and MV says the engine doesn’t even want variable valve timing, enigmatically crediting the prolonged energy unfold to a “distinctive 5-cylinder firing order.”
The sq. 5 can be mentioned to be narrower than an inline 4 and shorter than a V4, giving chassis designers a variety of freedom in optimizing its location. Smoothness, refinement and dynamic steadiness are emphasised. All in all, a lot originality and real-world efficiency may justify super-premium costs for the bikes constructed round it.
MV Agusta says the engine’s debut will mark the return of a “extremely anticipated” mannequin that’s been dropped, but additionally references it will definitely showing in supersport, bare and even touring designs.
The Varese-based firm was rescued from near-insolvency in 2016 by the expatriate Russian bike fanatic Timor Sardarov, whose father constructed wealth for the household on oil and gasoline pursuits. A partnership with KTM ended in January, with the Sardarovs reassuming unique management by means of their agency Artwork of Mobility S.A., the place Timor is CEO. MV Agusta says it bought 4,000 bikes in 2024, an enormous enhance on 2023, and claims a components availability price of 99% on fashions as much as seven years outdated.
MV Agusta
At EICMA it unveiled two new triple-cylinder nakeds, the flamboyantly styled Brutale Serie Oro and the extra mundane, and less expensive, Brutale 800. On the efficiency peak of its vary is the Superveloce 1000 Serie Oro, a totally faired, 208-hp, 998cc transverse inline 4. The quadrato 5, if it delivers what’s promised, would distinguish MV designs rather more sharply from cheaper opponents.
Supply: MV Agusta
