Five is a very unusual number of cylinders for a motorcycle engine, and the most familiar examples graced track-only prototypes that brought world championships in two eras to Honda. If storied Italian brand MV Agusta wanted to focus public attention firmly on hopes for the future, announcing that a five-pot engine would propel a fresh range of bikes would be a neat way to do it.
That MV had such a motor under development was implied mutely this month in Milan at the world’s biggest motorcycle trade show, EICMA 2025, where a peculiarly shaped powerplant was displayed in a transparent case. No press kit accompanied it, although some magazines extracted comment from MV people at the event.
The company has since released an outline of the engine’s layout and a summary of how it might use it. Apart from generating a second publicity splash 10 days after the first, the details confirm what Italian outlet Moto.it was told verbally at the show: the new design indeed used five cylinders, it could be made in displacements ranging from 850cc to 1150cc, it might produce as much as 240 hp (179 kW), and it would debut in a new model some years from now.
Honda’s first five-cylinder and arguably its most famous was a transverse, inline design, the RC149 that won the 125cc road-racing world championship in 1966, with a 21,000 rpm rev ceiling and an eight-speed gearbox. Its other five was a V5, the 990cc RC211V, with which Valentino Rossi won the first two MotoGP crowns contested under new rules encouraging four-strokes. The MV Agusta five-cylinder is different again: neither inline nor a V but a quadrato – a square – as the company styles it, even if it is more accurately a trapezoid.
The motor MV showcased is essentially a transverse parallel twin riding behind a parallel triple and using a single cylinder head, with intakes placed between the two cylinder banks and exhausts on the outside. It appears to use three camshafts, one dedicated to each set of exhaust valves and a third between them that would operate all inlet valves. Each cylinder bank turns its own crankshaft, “in ‘U’ configuration” – whatever that means, as the German magazine Motorrad observes wryly. Perhaps the base of the U is a gear system connecting the cranks at one end.
Notwithstanding the mass of the extra crank, MV Agusta claims the engine will weigh less than 132 lb (60 kg), which would make it significantly lighter than the 142-lb (65-kg) Desmosedici Stradale in the Ducati Panigale V4. Shaving weight, the oil pump and water pump will be electric.
An eye-opening aspect of the claimed specification, presumably for the biggest version, is the maximum torque output, which is represented as “astonishing” and comes in at 135 Nm, or just under 100 lb-ft. Ducati, by way of comparison, claims only 121 Nm (89 lb-ft) for its marginally smaller V4.
Further, the square-five’s torque peak is said to arrive at just 8,500 rpm, while peak power arrives north of 16,000. That would justify the factory’s description of the design as an “engineering masterpiece", and MV says the engine doesn’t even need variable valve timing, enigmatically crediting the extended power spread to a “unique 5-cylinder firing order.”
The square five is also said to be narrower than an inline four and shorter than a V4, giving chassis designers a lot of freedom in optimizing its location. Smoothness, refinement and dynamic balance are emphasized. All in all, so much originality and real-world performance could justify super-premium prices for the bikes built around it.
MV Agusta says the engine’s debut will mark the return of a “highly anticipated” model that’s been dropped, but also references it eventually appearing in supersport, naked and even touring designs.
The Varese-based company was rescued from near-insolvency in 2016 by the expatriate Russian motorcycle enthusiast Timor Sardarov, whose father built wealth for the family on oil and gas interests. A partnership with KTM ended in January, with the Sardarovs reassuming exclusive control through their firm Art of Mobility S.A., where Timor is CEO. MV Agusta says it sold 4,000 bikes in 2024, a big increase on 2023, and claims a parts availability rate of 99% on models up to seven years old.
At EICMA it unveiled two new triple-cylinder nakeds, the flamboyantly styled Brutale Serie Oro and the more mundane, and less costly, Brutale 800. At the performance peak of its range is the Superveloce 1000 Serie Oro, a fully faired, 208-hp, 998cc transverse inline four. The quadrato five, if it delivers what’s promised, would distinguish MV designs much more sharply from cheaper competitors.
Source: MV Agusta
