With some bikes, it’s love at first sight. Like the Royal Enfield Bullets I saw in the dealer’s yard in Delhi in 1998 that Paddy Minne and I were about to ride the 7,000 miles back to the UK on, one pillar box red and the other lemon yellow, the colours of our sponsors Nambarrie Tea.
Or the little electric Maeving RM1 and the new BSA Gold Star.
And now to that pantheon of beauty I can add the Benelli Imperiale 400.
Benelli, as you may know, was founded in Pesaro in 1911 by Teresa Benelli after her husband popped his clogs, leaving her with six wayward sons and no means of supporting them except for her savings.
In the 1920s, her youngest son, Tonino “The Terrible” won four Italian championship titles in five years on a Benelli 175, and the company did reasonably well down the decades until the late Sixties, when along with many others, it was scuppered by the slick, reliable machines emerging from Japan.
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The factory closed in 1988, and in 2005 the Benelli name was bought by giant Chinese company Qiangjiang. That’s pronounced Qiangjiang, for those of you not fluent in Mandarin.
Although the bikes are made in China, they’re still designed in Pesaro, and it shows. The Imperiale is so good looking that if it was a woman I’d want to marry it and have its babies, never mind the pain.
Climb aboard, and a quick bounce on the firm seat raised the suspicion that my buns would need a break after about 40 minutes. Spoiler alert – it came to pass as predicted.
The traditional chrome mirrors are excellent, and the instruments are a happy marriage of retro and modern, with an analogue speedo and tacho flanking a slender central digital bar showing fuel level and what gear you’re in.
Only minor complaint is that the speedo is marked in km/h, with tiny white-on-black mph figures within which are tricky to read.
The riding position is compact, especially for your average 6ft 7in motorcycle columnist, and although the bike weighs a reasonably light 205kg, there’s only 21bhp trying to shift that, so progress towards the horizon is gentlemanly rather than earth-shattering as you snick up through the sweet five-speed gearbox.
Handling is light and easy even at walking speed, and braking, with a single disc up front, is as civilised as acceleration.
The suspension is mildly suspect, with the rear bottoming out on one stretch of rough road, but firming up the preload would help that, and the fuelling was slightly snatchy off a closed throttle.
That aside, everything about the bike is gentle and civilised, from acceleration to handling and braking, but it comes with something which is difficult to manufacture in a bike, and that’s charm.
As you potter through the countryside at 60mph listening to the happy thrum of the engine – at least I think it was 60mph, due to the aforementioned speedo – it’s very easy to imagine that you’re actually proceeding gracefully through the Tuscan hills for luncheon with your mistress, washed down by a chilled bottle of Colli Orientali and followed by an afternoon exploring pleasures just as satisfying as motorcycling, and probably a lot cheaper given fuel prices at the moment.
Its obvious competitor is the Royal Enfield Meteor 350, which is slightly more expensive, from £3,879 to £4,039, and 14kg lighter, with better suspension and sharper handling.
But there’s not much in it, and the Enfield comes with a tweed jacket and a pint of Old Sparrowfart rather than a beautiful Italian mistress and a nice bottle of Colli Orientali.
So it’s really a choice whether you prefer the sunlit uplands of Olde Englandshire or the dappled dales of Tuscany.
* Test bike supplied by Davy’s Bikes of Bangor, davysbikes.com.
