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The Bimota BB1′s engine is the Rotax-developed 652cc single cylinder which BMW use in its F650 range. It’s torquey at low revs with a friendly burble. But it won’t rev that high – get even close to the 8000rpm red line and the vibration’s punitive. And it’s not very powerful. Bimota claims 48bhp which is about right – but we’re talking Yamaha XJ600S Diversion territory. Over 90mph it just runs out of puff.

So few examples of the Bimota BB1 are in use and those that are don’t do enormous mileages so few problems are reported. Engine reliability is good and the motorcycles are built to a high spec not a price. The biggest problem facing owners is the lack of a UK importer which makes servicing and obtaining parts difficult. Although this has recently changed.

This is where the Bimota BB1 Supermono excels dynamically. The engine may be underwhelming but you can make up some ground on the brakes and through the corners. The bespoke aluminum frame, steep steering and light (for the period) weight add up to an extremely nimble, sweet handling motorcycle. Brakes great but not superb by modern standards.

Not good. There’s better motorcycles for the money than the Bimota BB1 Supermono no matter what you want. If you must have a Bimota, try the YB9 – it’s Yamaha FZR600R engine is twice as powerful and much smoother. If you must have a racy sports single, Yamaha’s XTZ660 is a better bet for less dosh.

Like most Bimotas the BB1 is a race bike for the road so luxury was not high on the designer’s agenda. An extra front brake disc was a £300 option. The fuel tank has a neat ‘glove box’ compartment which is extremely handy. Bimota designers were switched on enough to keep the fuel lower in the bike for better weight distribution.

The Bimota Mantra’s 904cc Ducati engine appeared in the first generation Monster 900 bikes, the Paso, 900SS as well as the Cagiva Elefant 900, making it a mainstay of the Italian bike industry during the fist half of the 1990s. It’s a reasonably punchy unit and so long as you look after it, you’ll cover many miles in a relatively zen-like state.

Again, the Bimota Mantra is a surprising bike, because although it looks bizarre, it actually handles very well, with a stiff trellis frame, meaty Paioli 43mm forks and a firm monoshock at the back. The brakes are excellent and a 24 degree fork angle gives the Bimota Mantra real agility in town, or on very twisty roads. In a word, it’s classy.

Not may Bimotas from the 1990s have 100% reliability records and the Mantra is likely to suffer the same electrical niggles and various bodywork blemishes as an SB or YB series Bimota. For all their faults however, owners, especially those who bought them new tend to lavish thousands on them, so buying a Bimota Mantra used might not be too risky – so long as you don’t plan on riding it very far, or requiring any unobtainable spares.

Priced at £13,500 back in the mid 1990s the Mantra, indeed most Bimotas, were for the seriously rich biker. Few were sold obviously, as the oddball looks and high price ticket tended to put off all but the most determinded extroverts. Now, they fetch about £4000-£5000 used and are sought out by collectors in the main, as their sheer rarity means the value of the Bimota Mantra will probably rise in the future.

There’s some classy bits of engineering on the Bimota Mantra, with top notch Italian suspension and braking components for the era on show. The tiny screen doesn’t offer much wind protection however and the motorcycle’s oddball bodywork shapes more or less rule out practical duties like slinging luggage on the bike and touring on it. Definitely more show than go.

Forget the WSB-homologation special 750, the GSX-R1100-powered Bimota SB6 is the daddy. Huge, terrifyling and awesome it needs handling with respect but rewards with 147bhp and enough meaty midrange to satisfy a truck driver. The Bimota SB6 is big, solid and there are few bigger rushes.

There’s no doubting the Bimota SB6′s ingredients are top quality, albeit ones chosen more for their out-and-out performance rather than durability, but the way they’re put together is often a little slipshod. Panel gaps are poor, bits fall off or unscrew themselves and, like all Bimotas, the SB6 generally needs treating with kid gloves.

In its day – and that’s a decade ago, remember – the Bimota SB6 was phenomenal. But it’s now looking decidedly old hat. The Bimota SB6 steers well enough and is reasonably lithe and low thanks to its massive twin spar aluminium frame and decent geometry and (Paoli) suspension, but everything else has been well overtaken.

When new, the Bimota SB6 was getting on for twice as much as its donor bike and, even used, their an expensive luxury from the Italian school of exotica. That said, today you can still get yourself one hell of a superbike, albeit a slightly old-fashioned one, for less than the price of a used Japanese 600.

No luxuries or creature comforts, the Bimota SB6 is a pared to the bone sportster. But that it does have is top notch. Hand-milled aluminium everywhere, a sprinkling of carbon fibre and among the very best of cycle parts – Paoli suspension, Brembo brakes, Marchesini wheels and more.

Most Bimota motorcycles of the past took engines from cutting edge sports bikes and tuned them further. The Bimota DB5 uses Ducati’s old-technology, two-valve per cylinder, air cooled 992cc V-twin. It’s never going to match 1000cc sports motorcycles for power but the Benelli DB5 produces excellent torque at low revs and has character the Japanese could never engineer into their motorcycles. Early Bimota DB5s showed FI glitches.

Like all Bimotas the DB5 is rare and motorcycles that are out there tend to be cosseted, low mile machines. Ducati’s reliability reputation’s not the best but their latest engines, including the 1000 dual spark unit in the Bimota DB5 are fine. Parts availability and specialist servicing for this motorcycle are extremely scarce as there’s no major official importer.

Bimota have never skimped here. They design a superb frame and then get the finest suspension available and bolt it on to the motorcycle. The Bimota DB5 is exceptionally light – Bimota claims 156kg. As it’s designed as a track motorcycle it’ very stable. Track heads and Gixxer nutters may want faster steering but the suspension’s so adjustable they should be able to achieve it. Even in standard trim the Bimota DB5 stops and corners with panache and precision.

£17,500 new is a lot for a motorcycle. You can get a faster and more capable motorcycle on a track for about half that. While the spec sheet can’t justify the price, the build quality almost can – each part on the Bimota DB5 is crafted without compromise and the whole motorcycle looks like a million dollars.

Considering the road-orientated engine in the Bimota DB5, the riding position’s pretty committed. All day comfort is not good on this motorcycle. The mirrors are useless and there’s no knobs and whistles on the Bimota DB5 – but what is there is executed with flair and engineering excellence. Plus there’s that Ohlins designer label suspension which makes a difference anyone can notice.

The Bimota SB8R’s powerplant is a big V-twin borrowed from Suzuki’s TL1000 but hotted up in the Rimini factory. Large throttle bodies up power to 138bhp at the crank (around 124 at the rear wheel) with devastating mid range too. The Bimota SB8R is a delight to use and not for the inexperienced – but not a vast improvement over the original TL1000S and slower than an R1.

The Bimota SB8R is hard and track-focused. It seems a shame to take something so carefully crafted and so beautiful then risk cart-wheeling it into a worthless pile of scrap. But if you don’t thrash your Bimota round a track you’re not using it properly. The Bimota SB8R is superb at that but less happy pottering – although it’ll cope.

Bimotas are well built but most SB8Rs are track or race motorcycles and few rack up tens of thousands of road miles so few problems are heard of. Quality is high. The biggest problem with ownership will be the lack of dealer back up – at the time of writing there was no importer for Bimota which means proper servicing and spare parts will be hard to come by, although this has now improved slightly.

The SB8R is cheap for a Bimota (£14,500 in 1999), expensive compared to more mundane rivals. If you’re looking for the best performance per pound, look elsewhere (probably at a GSXR1000). But if you’re after a slice of motorcycling history, a bike with more charm than Terry Thomas and thing of beauty that’ll draw a crowd at any motorcycle meet, it’s worth a look.

What’s there is generally good enough for the Bimota SB8R to sit in an art gallery. Cost is rarely an issue – getting it right and making it look good are. For example the Bimota SB8R’s tail unit has no frame to support it – it’s all carbon giving a 2kg weight saving. Plus there’s a bespoke aluminium frame made using high-tech techniques. The pegs are high, bars are low.

If you’re going to build a two-stroke, then make it a tiger, not a pussycat spitting up a fur ball. The sad reality is that the Bimota V-Due never really had enough poke, and it made its claimed 110bhp in a narrow power band, which made the motorcycle very hard work to ride. When the 175bhp R1 appeared a year after the V-Due was launched it made the Bimota V-Due look like some badly jazzed up club racer’s 250 stroker.

Nearly everyone who bought a Bimota V-Due seemed to take it back and demand a refund at some point in the late 90s. The trick upper cylinder lube system didn’t work effectively and the fuel injection rarely played ball below 5000rpm. Body parts were rumoured to crack. Oh Lordy. The motorcycle was such a warranty and PR disaster it more or less sank Bimota financially.

Big respect here, a superb chassis, probably over-engineered for the 500cc motor, but super-lightweight and possessed of outstanding suspension and brake. It made the Bimota V-Due a sweet thing to razz around corners, when in the right gear/rpm combo.

As a classic bike investment, picking up a Bimota V-Due now might – just might – pay off in another 10-20 years time. But forget about riding it anywhere, just air bubble the thing and hope that the Italian government funds a musuem of motorcycle design folly in 2025.

Hmm, perhaps it was the way that the mirrors looked straight off a Cagiva Mito 125, or the naff indicators poking through the carbon fibre bodywork, but the Bimota V-Due didn’t exactly drip from head to toe in designer kit for £14,500. They even put two warning lights in the headstock and not the dashboard…bit poor.

There’s a fine line between Ducati’s air-cooled, twin spark 1072cc V-twin motor being fun or disappointing depending on what motorcycle it’s slotted into. In the lightweight DB6 Delirio or Ducati Hypermotard it’s a little gem and you’re left never wanting more. In the heavier Multistrada, DB5 and this Bimota Tesi 3D it just hasn’t got the oomph to make you smile. The Bimota Tesi 3D desperately needs a more powerful motor.

If the front suspension system is open to debate the quality of the Bimota Tesi 3D certainly isn’t, it’s quite simply stunning to behold. As a piece of motorcycling art it’s worth every penny if you’ve got the dosh. Engine-wise the Ducati unit is very simple and is tried and tested in the Multistrada and Hypermotard, so there shouldn’t be any problems with reliability.

The theory of the hub centered front end is that, unlike forks, braking forces are kept away from the front suspension, leaving it free to deal with bumps in the road. The reality of the Bimota Tesi 3D is that there’s very little ‘feel’ from the  front end, which can rob the rider of the confidence to push hard into corners and generate corner speed. The seating position is ridiculously cramped and too far forward.

The Bimota Tesi 3D isn’t supposed to be a sign of things to come from the newly resurrected Bimota factory, it’s more a project to show off what the talented engineers there can do when their imagination is allowed to run wild. The DB5 and DB6 Delirio are the Bimotas of the future and they are very good; the Bimota Tesi 3D on the other hand is an oddity and only worth it if you really, really have to have one.

As you’d expect from the price tag, the Bimota Tesi 3D has been put together by hand using only the finest materials and cycle parts. The small fairing, load-bearing seat unit and most of the bodywork is from carbon fibre and Bimota’s trademark milled billet aluminium plates adorn the Bimota Tesi 3D everywhere.