An aircraft family turns to motorcycles.

MV Agusta is an Italian motorcycle maker whose modern headquarters and main production facilities are in Varese, on the shore of Lake Varese, according to English Wikipedia. The name is a contraction: MV stands for Meccanica Verghera, after Verghera, the hamlet where the first machines were made, and Agusta is the family that founded it.

The family business was aircraft. English Wikipedia says Count Giovanni Agusta founded the Costruzioni Aeronautiche Giovanni Agusta aircraft factory in Samarate in 1923, and that his widow and sons carried it on after him. When the end of the Second World War brought restrictions on Italian aircraft production, the family turned to an idea Count Domenico Agusta had formed during the war: build motorcycles, which a country left damaged by the war would need.

Both English and Italian Wikipedia date the company to 19 January 1945, when Meccanica Verghera was registered at Cascina Costa, near the present Malpensa airport. Italian Wikipedia describes it as a section of the Agusta group devoted to motor vehicles for the road.

The first product was a light motorcycle with a 98 cc two-stroke engine. English Wikipedia says the prototype was shown to the press in late October 1945 at a dealership on Via Piatti in Milan, with a fuel tank marked with a large M and V. It was first called the “Vespa 98”, then renamed “MV 98” to avoid confusion with the Vespa scooter made by Piaggio. Production began in 1946 in Economica and Turismo versions, Wikipedia adds.

Racing as a family hobby, helicopters as the business.

Racing arrived almost at once. English Wikipedia describes Domenico Agusta as passionate about mechanical work and motorcycle racing, and says the company launched a factory racing programme soon after the MV 98 went on sale. At the end of 1949, Wikipedia says, he brought in two men from Gilera, the designer Piero Remor and the chief mechanic Arturo Magni, to build a four-cylinder 500 cc racer.

Results followed in the 1950s. English Wikipedia says the British rider Cecil Sandford won the 1952 Isle of Man TT on an MV 125 and went on to take the 125 cc world championship that year. The company withdrew from Grand Prix racing at the end of the 1976 season, according to the same source.

Meanwhile the parent firm went back to the air. Wikipedia says that in 1952 the Agusta factory began building helicopters under licence from the American maker Bell, and that the Grand Prix bikes drew on the casting, forging and machining methods used for the helicopters.

Colour became part of the identity in these years. English Wikipedia refers to red and silver as the traditional MV Agusta colours, noting that in the 1978 season the Castiglioni brothers had a Suzuki racer painted in those colours after failing to buy the MV race team. That pairing of red with silver is the starting point for the palette in this guide.

Road production wound down after the racing ended. Wikipedia says the state financing body EFIM became the company’s financial partner in the 1970s, and that bikes continued to be sold until 1980, when the last machines in the Cascina Costa warehouses were bought up.

The name then waited for a new owner. Italian Wikipedia says the brand was acquired in 1992 by Cagiva of Schiranna, a district of Varese, the motorcycle group run by the Castiglioni family. English Wikipedia adds that the family then also owned Ducati, Moto Morini and Husqvarna, and worked from former Aermacchi premises at Schiranna.

Design and documentation.

Motorcycle makers speak through a small set of surfaces: a badge on the fuel tank, a name cast into an engine case, the colours of a racing livery and the model names that stay in a catalogue for decades. Many of these companies began as workshops that repaired bicycles, built parts for other firms or sold engines to anyone who would fit them, and the marque only came later. Some are still run close to the families or towns that started them; others have passed through several owners, closed and reopened, or moved their production to another country while keeping their design offices at home.

Because a famous name can outlive the factory that made it, the useful questions are plain ones: who founded the business and where, who owns it now, where the motorcycles are actually built, and how the badge and lettering have changed along the way.

Each guide in this group sets what independent, dated sources record beside what the company says about itself, and marks clearly where a fact rests only on the maker’s own account.

From Cagiva to Harley-Davidson, KTM and the Sardarov family.

The relaunch came with a new superbike. English Wikipedia says the new four-cylinder F4, styled under Massimo Tamburini, was shown to the press on 16 September 1997, and that the surprise was that it carried the MV Agusta logo. Wikipedia also says an F4 750 was exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum’s “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibition in New York in 1998. In 1999, the same source says, the Cagiva group was restructured with MV Agusta as the parent company and main brand identity.

Ownership then changed several times. English Wikipedia says Malaysia’s Proton took a majority stake in December 2004 and sold it on the following year to the Italian holding GEVI. Harley-Davidson acquired the company in 2008, its own press release of August 2010 says, and announced in October 2009 that it intended to sell. That release, dated 6 August 2010, reports that the sale to Claudio Castiglioni and his holding company MV Agusta Motor Holding S.r.l. took effect that day.

Under the Castiglionis the range grew around three-cylinder engines. Wikipedia says production of the F3 675 and the Brutale 675 began at the Varese factory in 2012, followed by models including the Dragster, Rivale, Turismo Veloce and Stradale; Giovanni Castiglioni had taken charge in 2011. Mercedes-AMG held a 25 per cent stake from 2014 until it was paid out in November 2017, according to Wikipedia. In March 2016, Wikipedia says, a Varese court approved a court-supervised continuity arrangement for the company.

New investors came in from 2016. English Wikipedia says Giovanni Castiglioni agreed an investment with COMSAR Invest, part of the Black Ocean Group managed by the Sardarov family, in November 2016, and that Black Ocean held 49 per cent of the holding company by mid-2017. Timur Sardarov later became chief executive. The Superveloce, a retro-styled racer based on the F3 800, followed in 2020.

The next partner was Austrian. In an announcement of 15 March 2024, Pierer Mobility said its subsidiary KTM AG had acquired a stake in MV Agusta Motor S.p.A., “based in Varese”, through a capital increase in November 2022, had taken over MV’s supply chain and purchasing in October 2023, and was exercising early an option to take a majority. Hubert Trunkenpolz became chief executive and chairman, with Sardarov staying on as vice-chairman, brand ambassador and consultant.

On 31 January 2025 Pierer Mobility announced that KTM AG had agreed to sell all its MV Agusta shares to the minority shareholder Art of Mobility S.A., with completion expected in the first half of 2025. Cycle News reported on 4 February 2025 that Art of Mobility, controlled by the Sardarov family, would regain full ownership, and quoted Timur Sardarov calling it “a moment of pride for all of us at MV Agusta.”

For a design guide, MV Agusta shows how two initials on a tank and a red-and-silver pairing can stay recognisable through decades of changing owners, with short Italian model names such as Brutale and Superveloce doing the rest. Compare Ducati, once a Castiglioni stablemate, and Harley-Davidson, an owner from 2008 to 2010; the Austrian side of the story is in our KTM guide. For this guide we use Corsa red, race silver and graphite with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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