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FB Mondial 125

Few marques have achieved so fine a competition record in so short a time as FB Mondial, the Italian company's period at the very top of Grand Prix racing encompassing the years 1949-51, when it won three back-to-back World Championships, plus a gloriously successful swansong in 1957 that secured a further two world titles. Sadly, what should have been the dawn of a new golden age for the Bologna marque was not to be: Mondial, along with Moto Guzzi and Gilera, withdrew from Grand Prix racing at the season's end, and although the firm built a number of - mainly two-stroke - racers in the 1960s, it never achieved the same heights again.

The factory closed its doors in 1979 and that would have been the end of the story but for the two Villa brothers, Francesco and Walter, who revived the moribund marque in the late 1980s with company founder Count Bosselli's full approval. Produced at the Villas' factory at Crespallano, some 15 kilometres from Bologna, the first of these proposed new Mondials (the 'FB' prefix had been dropped) was a 125cc Grand Prix racer.

Its specification was impressive: aluminium twin-spar frame; water-cooled engine with disc valve induction and Nikasil-plated cylinder; Motoplat ignition; six-speed gearbox; 'dry' clutch; Marzocchi forks; Brembo disc brakes; Marvic wheels; etc. Displayed for the first time at the 1987 Milan Show, the Mondial was priced at a staggering 15 million lire (you could have bought a contemporary superbike for the same amount of money) and not surprisingly there were few customers.