TOPIC:

Is there any reference to Saturno production numbers? Interested to know how many were actually manufactured.

From memory (and I'm not sure I can trust that now) the figure of 1,200 comes to mind. That worked out at 1,000 for Japan, 50 for UK and the remaining 150 for Italy and rest of Europe.

I was in the process of tracing every Saturno built and had quite a list of exact model, chassis/engine numbers and owner/location but had a severe computer crash and lost everything from the hard drive. Not to worry thought I as I had backed up all my folders on an external hard drive, only to find out that all that was backed up were the folders, but all were empty.

I can say that each Saturno was handbuilt by a team of 6 who worked on a metal (sometime wooden) table, even had pictures of that process but alas, all again were lost. Paul

Hi paul

well the one I have just bought is as follows

Frame No: NH02-00139R
Engine No: 22101046

I presume from the frame no it is the 139th Japanese market one built

How I wish life would be that straight forward to assume construction numbers followed a logical sequence. I did find a contact who used to work for Gileras but was then working for Moto Guzzi, but she had a lot of Gilera historical details which she sent me. Included was a complete list of every Saturno built and where they went from the factory. Again, going by memory (so it may well not be accurate) I think chassis numbers were allocated in blocks as built and not all numbers were used. Anything built with the start of NH on chassis number was definitely built for the Japanese market, the UK and Europe chassis numbers I can't recall but certainly not NH ones.

I still have database file for 'The GeN' as it was in 1999. A quick look reveals 39 Saturnos but that includes a few members from outside the UK. Some of those I have UK registration numbers for but no chassis or engine numbers.

If I remember correctly David Champion who used to work for Piaggio told me that they imported Gileras to the UK in batches of 25. On that basis, 50 sounds about right for Saturnos and I suspect there was only one batch of GFRs. Of course several used machines have been imported from Italy since then.

When I find a tuit I'll get the file transferred to my latest PC and do some further analysis of numbers.

By the Way Paul. I still have a copy of the entire IGottagilera site safely on disk including the forum messages. Unfortunately One.com do not support Perl so I can't make it accessible. One day I'll find a conversion method from 'E-Blah' that works.

in Australia we get lots of bikes imported from japan. They are normally very low KM and in good condition. I know of at least 3 Saturnos that have come in from japan this year. However, one of the importers i spoke to said that they are gettting harder and harder to find in japan.

I almost bought a lovely Bimota YB7 the other week a 400cc FZR engined bike from japan. $6000 which is about 4000 pounds lot of bike for the money