A Promising Future?

Since 2013, Swiss entrepreneurs Marco Chiancianesi and Daniele Longoni have owned Bimota. However, the plans they announced at the time—regarding production volumes, new models, and involvement in motorsports—were not realized. Instead, the company experienced years without new models and retreated to a much smaller facility of just 200 square meters.

All the more surprising was Bimota’s announcement at the Milan Motorcycle Show in November 2019 to establish a new company, in which Kawasaki would hold a 49.9% stake. The agreement stipulates that Kawasaki will supply components, and all future Bimota models will exclusively be based on Kawasaki technology. At the same time, the first collaborative model, the spectacular Tesi H2, was unveiled. Featuring hub-center steering and a 231-horsepower supercharged engine, the Tesi H2 is priced at approximately €64,000, making it the most expensive Bimota ever offered. Could this be the path to a successful future?

In 2019, Kawasaki stated on its global website that its involvement was intended to support the revival of the Bimota brand and to expand business operations in development, production, and sales. For 2020, the company planned to produce 200 Bimota motorcycles. However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, the market launch of the Tesi H2 was delayed until October, and the planned production numbers were not met.

The second project of the new joint venture was the KB4, a much more conventional sports motorcycle compared to the Tesi H2, both in terms of technology and price. In 2022, the KB4 was offered in Germany for €35,700.

By 2022, the company had only around a dozen employees—a similar size to the mid-1970s when the first chapter of Bimota’s success story began. Demonstrating its commitment to its plans, Bimota moved into a new 2,500-square-meter factory at Via Ausa 118 in Cerasolo, about 10 kilometers southwest of Rimini.

After the Tesi H2 and the KB4, additional models were introduced, including the BX 450 and the Tera. Then, in spring 2024, news broke that Bimota was planning to participate in the Superbike World Championship in 2025 under the banner „Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team.“ At the Milan Motorcycle Show in November 2024, the homologation model, the KB998, was presented. During winter testing in November at the Jerez circuit in Spain, the team even posted the fastest lap time in one of the training sessions.

Something is happening again at Bimota!