Miguel Angel Galluzzi - Motorcycle Designs - Later Motorcycles

Later Motorcycles

After the Monster, Galluzzi designed the 1997 Ducati ST2. As the Monster had opened up a new market outside the road racing derived sport bike segment, so too did the ST2 widen Ducati's range by expanding the company's offerings into the realm of sport touring. Industrial designer Andrew Serbinski found Galluzzi's first generation Ducati ST design to be ill-proportioned, with the fuel tank too large, suggesting a better design would be more aerodynamic and more true to the "traditional Ducati values of compactness, the feel of motion at speed and sense of exotica."

Next was the Cagiva Planet "Baby Monster" of 1998, a variant of the Mito, followed by the 1999 Raptor and V-Raptor, which used a Suzuki engine shared by the TL1000, and intended as a direct competitor to Galluzzi's own Monster. Galluzzi's description of the engine choice was that, "We had engines from all over the world, but the best two were Triumph's Speed Triple three and the Suzuki TL1000. Both engines had soul and character but eventually we decided on the Suzuki engine." Early testers were "terrified" at the 135 hp (101 kW) prototype. Galluzzi said that, "the bike felt as if it was permanently out of control. It was fun!" This prompted increasing the head angle from 23 to 25 degrees, and increasing the wheelbase from 1,390 to 1,440 mm (55 to 57 in), creating, "neutral handling but still all the excitement of the original bike," along with tuning the exhaust and airbox to increase torque under 10,000 rpm at the expense of 35 hp (26 kW) less peak output. The result was a bike that was both "bonkers and useable".

After leaving Cagiva and joining Aprilia in 2006, he designed the 2007 Aprilia Dorsoduro, 2008 RSV4, 2008 Mana, SL 750 Shiver of 2009, and several Husqvarna models. He also contributed to the Vespa/Piaggio 1+1 concept vehicle.

Many of the Ducatis Galluzzi originally styled were later revised and updated by Pierre Terblanche, such as the ST series and the Monster 696 update of 2008. Terblanche later joined Galluzzi at Aprilia, where they have worked together on several new and revised models for Aprilia subsidiary Moto Guzzi. They contributed to the Moto Guzzi V12 series, with Le Mans, Strada, and X variants, displayed at EICMA in 2009. Galluzzi described the challenge he and Terblanche faced revising the Moto Guzzi image by saying, "The Guzzi crowd is extremely conservative, but if we only concentrate on those, we are going to lose eventually. So these bikes are looking into the future." This is similar to the balance sought with earlier Ducati designs, but, "the advantage Guzzi has versus Ducati is that Ducati makes sportsbikes, Guzzi can do anything it wants because they’ve been doing it a long time and on all sorts of bikes. We are not in a box, we can do anything we want as long as we are able to make it."

In 2012 Moto Guzzi introduced Galuzzi's "Art Nouveau style" California 1400 which breaks with traditional Harley-Davidsion-inspired cruiser style of the previous California. The new 1400 is more radically modern, similar to the latest power cruisers, the Harley-Davidsion V-Rod and Ducati Diavel. The bike's new1,400 cc (85 cu in) engine expands Moto Guzzi's engine range, on top of the previous 1,200 cc (73 cu in) and 750 cc (46 cu in) displacement powerplants.