Oldies MotoGP: Akira, the French engine that made us dream…

October 2009, the Spanish company Inmotec Consultora Técnica announces the details of its MotoGP project for the World Championship in 2010. Behind the 800cc Inmotec GPI 10 prototype designed in Pamplona in northern Spain by engineers and designers led by Oscar Gorría hides a 100% Akira Technologies engine designed and manufactured in Bayonne.

The French engineering company headed by Sylvain Loume has an undeniable know-how in multiple fields, including aeronautics and motorcycle racing where it made a name for itself by working on the electronics of the cylinder heads of Kawasaki engines. 15 years later, and although the Akashi factory does not communicate on the subject, a small part of Akira’s know-how extends today to the official ZX-10RRs of Jonathan Rea et Alex Lowes in the Superbike World Championship, whose electronics and engines exude, to say the least, a very strong scent of the Southwest…

Be that as it may, the Bayonne engineers then produced a 798cc 80° V4 that could spin at 19,000 rpm and modestly deliver 215 horsepower after being compressed to 15.8. The weight of the jewel managed by Bosch electronics did not exceed 21 kilos with its gearbox, and if its 82mm bore exceeds the current limit by a small millimeter, we would have liked to see it in a 1000cc version at 90° to match today’s tastes…

Unfortunately, the Spanish adventure Inmotec fizzled out in the face of this very/too ambitious project (it was still a question of tackling the world’s largest manufacturers!) and, after a few runs, the engine reached Bayonne without participating. at the slightest stroke.

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This does not prevent us from taking full eyes by detailing its entrails…

Find here the forgotten MotoGP,Aprilia with its 3-cylinder Cube (see here) since 2002, Protons (see here), WCM (see here) in 2003, Moriwaki in 2004 (see here) then Sauber Petronas… never (see here)but also the Paton in 2001 (see here) and the Saber V4 of the same year only 500cc 2-stroke (see here).

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