Description
The Laverda Jota
Immaculate machine
Full recent service (including carb balance)
A supreme example of one of the very greatest Italian motorcycles
If you know you know ...
RICHARD SLATER - has confirmed that this is a genuine Jota
The Jota
Motorcycles move the body
Laverda motorcycles move the spirit
The Laverda Jota moves the soul ....
The Jota
And then the traffic thinned out, and sound and vision both came into focus. A super-cool looking guy, jeans, leather jacket, Ray Bans and equally noticeable female pillion passenger.... on a Laverda Jota.
The low bars somehow added to the aura - like a '70s 500cc Grand Prix race winner, helmet off, nonchalantly trundling down the *** lane.
The vision supplemented a minds-eye image that had been stuck in my mind for decades: when the top speed of a motorcycle makes the front page headline of a bike magazine or paper, you know it's significant.
I can't remember precisely where or when, but I can recall the headline itself.
It simply read "140mph!"
In that Rome moment I'd have bought that Laverda on the spot. My mental definition of "cool" had just been indelibly etched in my mind.
The 140mph headline bike was a Laverda Jota, and back in 1975 it was topping out at around 10mph faster than the Japanese superbikes of the moment.
But it wasn't a v-max that was down to wizardry in the Briganze, Italy, Laverda factory. In fact, the Jota didn't initially exist as a factory bike. It started life as the "3C" as in three-cylinder. It was, actually down to the recognition by the UK importers - Slater Bros - that the 85bhp pumped out by the 981cc Laverda triple was short of its true potential.
Slater Bros tinkered with the motor's innards, developed and fitted more efficient exhausts, and created the 3CE ("E" for England), the spec being adopted by the factory who named the bike the "Jota", after the name of an uneven beat of a dance - the distinctive uneven beat of the Laverda triple being its signature soundtrack.
Mark Hunt
