The little beast in front is a tough one to track down. And Christian, pulling its throttle strongly, appears completely relaxed astride it. We're riding over tiny, bumpy roads of asphalt, dirt, and gravel in an Italianate landscape that happens to be the West Virginia m ountains. No wonder Chris is so fast. His bike was made for these kinds of roads - if you can call 'em roads; they're little more than pathways. The bottom line is no one in our group can match Mr. Neuhauser's pace even though the rest of us are very well equipped on a Cagiva Gran Canyon, a Moto Guzzi Le Mans Rosso Corsa, a Triumph Sprint ST, and a Honda ST1100. Impressive.

And surprising, because the 750cc Breva V2 goes way back to the engines of the V35 and V50 that were presented at the IFMA in Cologne in 1976. Moto Guzzi started a second branch in their family tree of models then. But the smaller capacity bikes were never that successful, not like the big V2s were. The last versions came with 750cc and were used in their entry cruiser, the Nevada, which was sold in Europe.

Lately all of this has changed. The new Breva V750i.e., developed under the new Aprilia management, came to the U.S. at the end of 2003 to claim its spot in the midsize class and to garner a slew of new customers for Moto Guzzi.

"Keep it simple," could be the motto of the Guzzi engineers. The basic layout of the engine stayed as it was in the old V35/V50. The crank is mounted lengthwise with the two cylinders showing to the sides. Pushrods and rockers take care of the valve operation, and the heads present a simple but efficient design: The combustion chamber sits in the piston tops and not in the heads; it's called a Heron design. Moto Morini used the same principle for their 350, 500, and later for their 125 and 250 models. Advantages of this design are good torque and high efficiency (low fuel consumption and good mileage). The downside is you can only use parallel valves, and their diameter is limited by the little space that's left. So, you'll never build a high-performance engine with huge horsepower output if you use Heron heads.