Bimota Motorcycles BB3 | FIRST RIDE

The Bimota factory at Rimini lies in the heart of Italy's Adriatic Riviera, where each summer German tourists come to vacation. And just as the various resorts lining the beach depend on this Teutonic influx, so the revival of Italy's leading boutique bike builder is irredeemably linked to its newly forged alliance with BMW , with the BB3 Superbikes now leaving the factory powered by the German manufacturer's S1000RR four-cylinder engines.

This isn’t the first time BMW and Bimota have teamed up, with Bimota providing chassis for BMW’s engines. The two factories joined forces to create the BB1 Supermono built in 1994 and ’95, and then later BMW called on Bimota to help build the K1200RS. Since then, BMW has developed the fantastic S1000RR that it raced for five years in the World Superbike series, winning races but never the title before bowing out at the end of the 2013 season. This year Bimota took up the mantle of competing with a BMW-powered superbike, forging a collaboration with Francis Batta’s Team Alstare to run the BB3. That racing effort has served as the development program for this bike, the street version of the World Superbike BB3 machine.

The first thing to say about the BB3 is that it feels quite different to ride than the BMW it shares its engine with. The Bimota feels smaller and narrower, due in no small part to the incredibly slim and compact steel-tube and machined-aluminum frame. Since Bimota has fitted the same dash as on the BMW, there’s a slight sense of déjà vu, but let your eyes stray to the gorgeous triple clamp machined from billet and the carbon-fiber fairing or—well, the whole bike is eye candy; that’s all there is to it.

As one might expect of a bike developed to dominate on the racetrack, handling is superb. Turn-in to a corner is almost intuitive, and the bike is incredibly easy to guide through a series of S-bends, even at speed. Factory Superbike rider Christian Iddon had previously enthused to me about the handling in slow and mid-speed turns, and he was right. Mind you, he had a hand in that, since he and teammate Ayrton Badovini are racing identical bikes to the production BB3 in World Superbike’s Evo class this year, and their chassis setup and suspension feedback are being incorporated in the default settings for the streetbike.

Talk of suspension leads to ride quality, which on the new Bimota is improbably good for such a hard-edged sportbike. Top-shelf Öhlins suspension allows the bike to glide over all but the worst surface imperfections with uncanny compliance, yet this wasn’t accomplished at the expense of stability when the pace picks up.

And the BB3 is very, very fast—100 mph comes up in sixth with just 7,000 rpm showing on the tachometer, making this a true 200-mph streetbike with the rev limiter set at 14,000 rpm. An Arrow exhaust and the programmable ECU from the HP4 gives the BB3 a leg up on a stock S1000RR, with a claimed 200 hp at the crank at 13,000 rpm. But the best thing about the Bimota BB3 is arguably not how well it goes but how well it stops too. The Brembo Monoblock brakes deliver absolutely incredible braking, and with BMW’s ABS with anti-lift parameters, the bike stops with absolute stability.

That stability carries over to the rest of the bike, which is surprisingly easy to ride. With the light-action clutch, smooth transmission, fluid power, and an overall balanced feel, this bike offers the kind of poise that will make it suitable for those well-heeled but less-experienced customers whose dream of owning a Bimota just came true. Bimota Chief Engineer Andrea Acquaviva’s intentions to make the BB3 a true moto totale equally at home on road or track have been achieved. This is a forgiving bike, as well as a fast one.

After riding it on road, I’m convinced: The new BB3 is the best Bimota yet built, bar none, in the company’s 40 years of existence. It’s the 50th different Bimota model I’ve ridden in the past three decades—I got a surprise, too, that it has built so many different bikes!—and it’s a milestone in more ways than one, not just on a personal level. This is a benchmark bike, and it seems Bimota now has the vision and the resources to build the company back up again to the level that it needs to take full advantage of the outstanding motorcycle that Andrea Acquaviva and his colleagues have presented them with, courtesy of BMW. And with the substantial World Superbike rule changes coming for 2015, don’t be surprised if Bimota isn’t a serious contender for top honors next season, with this capable chassis to harness the proven performance of the BMW S1000RR motor.