1952 GILERA 150 TURISMO

COPYRIGHT - Words by Adam Bolton. Photography by Sara Zinelli.

To be honest, I wasn't too sure what I was meant to be looking at, and I wasn't too impressed with the mouldy old boxes and rusty metal sitting on the floor of the old, damp basement of an old farmhouse. A mile or two along rocky, almost impassable lanes had led me here, to an abandoned building used only now for storage and keeping horses in the fields nearby. We had to hack the undergrowth away to even open the metal double doors into the basement, and small frogs leaped out of the way as we finally gained access to the damp storage area. Light from the hot sun poured in and finally revealed the contents inside. Rows of old partly dismantled bikes, boxes, frames, rubbish and rust.

It had been the words "old Gilera" that had galvanised me into action. Not just the old Gilera part but the 'free' part that came after it. Of course, like anyone would, I had already started to fantasise of the priceless Gilera Saturno that I was about to own, or the ex-works department Saturno Corsa or 'Piuma' racer that had maybe, just maybe, disappeared to this shed many years ago. When I eventually found the egg shaped crankcases of the Gilera that was to become mine, the reality set in. Not bitter disappointment, as although we all must sometimes dream of that ultimate barn find, I was still being given (as I was to find out) a Gilera with loads of old school character and Italian charm.

I carried the musty boxes, the rusty frame and the various bits and pieces onto my van. The tank and useless wheels followed, in it became quickly clear that it was a 125 or 150 in capacity. "Oh, I remember now, it must be a Gilera 150", said Franco, who was kindly donating it to me. My friend Franco had been given the bike many years before by someone who had begun a restoration: he chromed the handlebars, and then gave up. Unfortunately, the would-be restorer was also an expert dismantler, and had pulled the bike apart into literally thousands of pieces. Completely needless, and leaving me with a difficult task of having to guess what went where. The box containing the headlamp and its complex internals of tiny screws, washers and bits of bakelite was to prove the biggest challenge of all.

I was fortunate to have a network of friends while in Italy that would help 'l'inglese' at every turn. One owned a Gilera 150 Turismo from 1953, so I called him with the frame and engine numbers from my pile of metal. "Yes, it's a 1952 Gilera 150 Turismo", he confirmed. "Quite rare and sought after too, as it had the earlier type girder forks and friction damper suspension, AND a fish tail silencer. People like that early, pre-war look. It's worth spending time and money on".

I started to research the model to know what I was dealing with. The 150cc four stroke, three speed Gilera Turismo had an antecedent in the 125cc Gilera, introduced in 1949. The ethos behind the Gilera 125 was to build a simple but reliable machine for every day use, with contained production costs and contained running costs for the owner. Designed by the legendary Piero Remor, whose hand also gave life to some of Gilera’s fire breathing GP racers, the bike flew in the face of contemporary thinking - which was for most redesigning for the umpteenth time the 2 stroke DKW RT 125. Gilera went for the four stroke option, considering the 2 stroke motor to be an inferior choice. Good choice, but Gilera did still make a mistake in wanting to stick to a side valve solution that had been the mainstay of their bikes up until the war. The very early 125s rolled off the production line as a side valve engined affair, but performance was weak, and complaints from punters and dealers flooded in almost immediately. Gilera accepted they had made a mistake, and the 125s were given heads with valves. March 1949 saw the redesigned Gilera 125 presented to the press and dealers, and the factory began to gear itself up for mass production, that by 1950 would see 1000 bikes a month being built. The model was a success, and the decision to up capacity to 150cc was a natural progression.

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