Moto Guzzi Le Mans
Series of Italian sports motorcycles 1976–1993
The Moto Guzzi Le Mans is a sports motorcycle first manufactured in 1976 by Italian company Moto Guzzi. It was named after the 24-hour motorcycle endurance race at Le Mans in France. The Le Mans designation was first used for an 850 prototype, based on the V7, displayed at Premio Varrone in late 1972.
The original 850 Le Mans was a café racer with clip-on handlebars and a bikini nose fairing, but in the face of more and more powerful bikes from other manufacturers later models were developed more as sports tourers with a three-quarter fairing. A marketing success, the Le Mans competed against Italian superbikes from Ducati and Laverda. The original Le Mans was continually developed and spawned several later models, a final versions appearing in the early 1990s.
Design
The basic design of the Le Mans remained essentially the same throughout the production run:
Engine
The engine developed from the earlier Moto Guzzi 750s is an aircooled 90 degree OHV V-Twin was at the time an already proven Moto Guzzi design that had been in production in various forms since the late 1960s. Like previous models the engine is mounted longitudinally in the chassis (Crankshaft inline with the wheels) presenting the air cooled cylinders to direct uninterrupted airflow and allowing a direct powertrain to the rear wheel. The V-twin configuration gives improved ground clearance over an opposed 'Boxer' layout, allowing the engine to mounted low in the chassis. The single camshaft mounted in the crux of the V operates the 2 valves (per cylinders) via pushrods and is driven by a short double row camchain.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Moto Guzzi Le Mans” as series of Italian sports motorcycles 1976–1993. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as series of Italian sports motorcycles 1976–1993. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2135086. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976 and 1972.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Moto Guzzi Le Mans” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.