Remember Velocifero? We last heard from the Italian electric motorcycle startup in October 2022, ahead of its planned launch of the Jump model at EICMA in November of that year. Now that it’s June 2023, it seems that the firm has something completely different up its sleeve, that it’s hoping to impress the world by accomplishing.
So far, 2023 is proving to be a year for world record attempts on two wheels—and even if it’s a little bit new to the game, Velocifero wants in on the action. On June 30, 2023, the electric motorcycle company will make its first world record speed attempt on a prototype electric scooter at the world-famous Monza circuit in Italy.
Velocifero’s electric prototype machine has so far not been revealed, although the company claims that it makes the equivalent of about 200 horsepower. Timekeepers from the Italian Motorcycle Federation will be on hand for the occasion, keeping careful track of things like top speed, flying kilometer top speed, zero to 100 kilometer per hour (or 62 mile per hour) acceleration, and so on.
But Wait, Who’s Riding the Velocifero Prototype?
Here’s where it gets interesting. See, the pilot of the as-yet unseen Velocifero electric scooter prototype is Alexander Tartarini, who is also one of the folks behind the Velocifero brand. If you’re thinking that his name sounds a little bit familiar, you may be thinking of his dad, Leopoldo.
For Italian motorcycle history nerds, the name Leopoldo Tartarini should ring several bells, and do so extremely loudly. Born in Bologna in August 1932, his father was a racer—and like father, like son, from an early age. In fact, Leopoldo started racing as a kid in smaller categories, just so he could get his international racing license and go on to compete in more major events as he aged into them.
Leopoldo Tartarini went on to a successful professional racing career with the likes of Benelli and Ducati. Unfortunately, in 1955, his promising racing career was ended after a serious crash during the Motogiro d’Italia while riding for Ducati, which nearly resulted in paralysis of both legs. The recovery was long, but he did eventually go on to walk again, even after doctors had believed it wasn’t possible. However, his racing career was over, and he was unable to pass the Italian Motorcycling Federation’s health tests to compete.
Just because he couldn’t compete didn’t mean that he couldn’t ride, however, and he was also still under contract to Ducati. Thus, he decided to ride around the world on a Ducati as a promotional exercise, along with his friend Giorgio Monetti. That groundbreaking trip, in turn, led Tartarini to decide to become a manufacturer himself. He founded the firm Italammezeta in 1960—which eventually went on to become Italjet.
You can take a racer off the roster, but you can't stop them from wanting to compete. Since Tartarini also had a mind for promotion and publicity, in 1969, he put all three of those things together and went to Monza to break some World Speed Records of his own with “a three-wheeled cycle car ...powered by a liquid-cooled CZ 250 engine.”
Back to 2023, and Alexander Tartarini, one of Leopoldo’s sons. Just as his dad attempted those speed records at Monza with his three-wheeled prototype machine some 54 years ago, Alexander will be doing the same thing with his electric Velocifero scooter prototype. What’s more, since it’s 2023 and not 1969, Velocifero will be livestreaming this world record attempt directly from Monza on its webpage, which we’ll link in our Sources.
The event is scheduled to kick off at 11 a.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST) on June 30, 2023, which is 5 a.m. Eastern. We’ll include a link in our Sources if you want to watch what happens and also see the new prototype scooter in action.
