In a recent post I mentioned that Claude Fior is one of the motorbike designers that I admire the most and that his 1987 250 GP bike is one of the most brilliant designs ever to me.
Steven Burge (he also designs motorbikes and owns a Hossack which he races in UK) read that comment and sent me an email with several photos of the 1987 Fior 250 GP. In fact I already had searched internet for pictures of this bike and I found almost nothing. So, thank you for the pictures, Steven!
The bike has a FFE (Hossack/Fior/Foale style) although probably this is not the most remarkable feature. What most impressed me when I first saw this bike in a magazine article 20 years ago was the chassis design, which is formed by two thin aluminum plates (I’m guessing here but I don’t think that they are thicker than 3 mm) situated in a parallel way, each one at each side of the engine (a Rotax tandem twin). The plates are joined by means of some small diameter steel tubes (unfortunately we can not see the tubes in this photos, it would be necessary to remove the fueltank to see it).
With such a minimalist chassis, the bike was under the minimum weight of the 250 GP category (90 kgs) and it was necessary to add some extra weight as ballast. The bike achieved some good results in the 1987 World Championship, the most remarkable one was a pole position in Germany.
This chassis inspired me when I designed the BOTT 250 H7 in 1998, although I used 4 plates (2 at each side of the engine, making a sandwich) instead of 2.
Unfortunately, Claude Fior passed away in a plane crash in December 2001, when he was flying an ultralight plane designed by himself.
Photos via moto-side-solo, pubished with permission of the autor.
Just stumbled across this site while looking for recumbent motorcycle designs and I’ve got to say thanks for putting so much interesting information in one place. There have been a lot of cool designs and features discussed and it makes for great reading. cheers
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