At this year's prestigious Goodwood Festival Of Speed event Simon Lowery relates his experience there with the Mondial Piega.

Mondial Movers
Around three months ago, I was introduced by a friend of mine to The Mondial Piega. Obviously I fell in love with this handsome machine straight away. Then I realized that it was far away from anything I could afford.
My friend was the importer for Germany, Tommy Wagner.

Then around 6 weeks ago I receive a phone call from Tommy asking if I knew about the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It turned out that Goodwood were trying to get a Mondial there to do a presentation but to no avail!

Then the fun started, with only 3 days to the show Tommy asked if I would go to Goodwood with him and present the bike. I agreed and 2 days later we set off from Munich to London carrying a complete Piega and a stripped down one for showing.

14 hours after leaving Munich we arrived on site at Goodwood. The atmosphere was already buzzing with any amount of famous people just wandering around. We quickly set up our exhibition then settled in to the show.

The first day I expected to be quiet enough to take a wander around and look to all the other displays. How wrong I was! I think to say we were the most popular bike exhibited at the show would be an understatement, let’s just say that for the whole 3 day event I only saw the paddock. The bike was an unbelievable success, most people in the UK had heard about it but never actually seen one in the flesh. We found out later that there was only one in the entire UK.

While showing people around the bike and doing the old PR thing I noticed a gentleman just standing starring at our display. I went over to speak to him asking if he knew anything about this bike. It turned out that this guy, Mr Jason Wright, was responsible for getting the bike from Germany to England. We have since become very good friends.

As the show went on, the bike was sat on, photographed and ogled by thousands of people and I did not have a spare moment.
Tommy took the bike on the track and the public went wild, when he came back from the track through the paddock area there were people there to take photos and ask for autographs.

All in all a very impressive scene. That however is not the end of the story.
That Saturday evening was the “Goodwood party”, this was something else.
People were only allowed in to the party if they were dressed in a smoking jacket, tie, shirt and trousers, once inside the house we were escorted through to the “Champagne Room” where people were catching up with old friends, talking about the show and, of course, drinking champagne. After about half an hour the bell chimed and we were all escorted through to the dining area - fantastic food and good company. Later we were asked to go to the garden at the back of the house. Here was one of the most magnificent firework displays I have ever seen, along with a music and laser show, it was a really good end to the evening or so we thought!!!!. When that show finished, inside the house in the party hall, Blondie was singing live!

Half way through the concert I bumped into my new friend Jason. He asked me to wait a moment as he wanted to introduce me to one of his friends, imagine my surprise when I was confronted with Giacomo Agostini? The night went on and we all had a great time.

The following day (Sunday) was just as busy as the rest of the weekend, there was so much enthusiasm about the Mondial I was amazed,

On the way home I contacted Performance Bike (UK bike Magazine) and asked them if they would be interested in doing an article on the Piega, they jumped at the chance and no sooner than I put the phone down, the plan was in motion. 10 days later I hosted the guys from PB and took them down in to the mountains around the Munich area.

The weather was not on our side, it was rain all day but we managed 1 hour in the afternoon to get some good photos, we then went in to the centre of Munich at midnight to get some night shots. The Mondial will be in the September or October issue of PB.

It is obvious to me now that Roberto Ziletti had the right idea, now all that remains is to carry this great man’s dream in to a reality and I hope to be there throughout the journey.

Simon Lowery