Orange crush

Whenever Laverda good-guy and 500 specialist Bob Dixon mentions another Laverda obsessive they always seem to be Dutch - but then orange is Holland's national colour, as well as being Laverda's traditional racing livery.

Bob tells that when Piero Laverda was preparing the firm's endurance racing challenge in the early 1970s, he discovered yellow would be the easiest colour for his pit crew to see at night. But another team already raced with bikes daubed like April's dandelions, so he asked a friend in the know to find out the second easiest colour to spot on a gloomy Mulsanne straight.

The answer was orange, so that's the colour the racing SFCs were painted. The V6 followed, as did the Jota and Montjuic. Today we just think of racing Laverda's being orange, and assume it's some sort of branding exercise. Nothing could be further from the truth.