"Is there any blood on the bike?"

A friend happened to be in the neighborhood and agreed to look at a motorcycle I was interested in buying. The machine was a nice MV Agusta Brutale. My respect bordering on fanboy for the designer of this motorcycle, the late Massimo Tamburini, is well known.

The seller wanted the bike out of his garage and out of his life. Now. I opened my mouth to make a reasonable offer when the seller confessed that if I gave him $500 right now the bike was mine. We agreed to terms pending a final inspection. My friend was there to do just that. He reported the bike was in really nice used condition; it had a few scrapes but everything worked and additionally the bike was littered with very expensive Rizoma Italian bike jewelry and also came with a similarly expensive aftermarket exhaust wrapped up neatly in a box.

The soon-to-be previous owner clearly just wanted the bike gone. He wouldn’t say why, but he was upfront about its condition and how it ran. The aftermarket exhaust, he admitted, was so loud it drove his entire neighborhood crazy. And since parts for older MVs are basically unobtainable, he improvised—using blue RTV, the dreaded mechanic "silly putty", to seal one of the case covers. In the process, he’d also managed to botch one of the case bolts. Even so, most of his work to keep the old Italian girl rolling was respectable. It wasn’t Guy Coulon-level meticulous—Coulon being the French master mechanic and engineer renowned in the Grand Prix paddock for fabricating solutions from scratch and keeping race bikes alive under impossible circumstances—but then again, almost no one operates on Guy’s level.

Years before the sleek lines of MV Agusta’s modern masterpieces, there was the humble, beat-up Ducati 916 that I stumbled upon in that cold alley in St. Paul. It wasn’t just any 916—it was a living, breathing example of Massimo Tamburini’s early genius. I’d met the late Tambo, seen him chain-smoke through dinner, and savored his every word. That weathered machine—patched, dented, and still majestic—carried the DNA of a design legend.

Oh, that Beater 916 story. That story had legs! Purported Hollywood and Netflix people came by and were curious. Wanna sign this NDA? Was it a script? Was it a musical? Seems like a fever dream now but the fact remains—Tamburini is my favorite motorcycle designer.

The MV Agusta Brutale was born at the turn of the millennium, conceived as a raw and aggressive naked motorcycle that carried the same design DNA as the company’s iconic F4 superbike. The Brutale was styled by the legendary Massimo Tamburini at the Cagiva Research Center, the same mind behind the Ducati 916 and MV’s F4. Tamburini adapted the sharp lines and sculpted bodywork of the F4 into a minimalist, exposed form that emphasized the engine and chassis rather than full fairings. Early Brutales like mine used MV’s inline-four engine in varying displacements, and the bike quickly earned a reputation for its combination of exotic styling, ferocious performance, and razor-edged handling. It wasn't until I actually rode this bike for the first time that I remembered I rode an MV, at Monza, in 1999 or 2000. It was maybe two glorious laps on an MV at Monza; how could I have ever let that be over-written in my memory?

The question remains: why would someone sell a motorcycle like this for just $500?

I was on the phone with my shipping contact as he inspected the bike and different scenarios were rushing through my brain. I finally asked my shipping guy to look the motorcycle over closely for any sign of blood or dried blood. Who knows? There was none. The previous owner was clearly happy for the MV Agusta Brutale to be gone from his garage. He tried to sell my shipping guy a bicycle too. And I think a garden hoe.

I transferred the title, came home from the DMV, and propped a lawn chair on the porch—one leg steadied by the folder of MV bill-of-sale documents. It wouldn’t be the first time the police dropped by with questions about a motorcycle I’d bought that set off a dozen alarms at the DMV, so I was ready for whatever might come next, be it handcuffs, helping them load the MV on a trailer so it could be used as evidence against me or returned to the rightful owner.

They never came.

The title came back clean and my contact at the police ran the MV's VIN thru every stolen vehicle database he could and that too came back clean. In the mean time, I sold the aftermarket exhaust that came with the Brutale for exactly what I paid for the Brutale so by any creative accountant’s math, the MV was now free, which is probably the only time you’ll ever hear ‘free’ and ‘Italian motorcycle’ in the same sentence.

With nothing to lose and everything nice and legal, I started riding the MV every day; I put it in rotation with the three or five other bikes that I ride regularly. Also I've started sending my friend Tony Romo at Dunlop "Dean guilt rays" for fresh rubber. Also, every time I talk to Ferracci—he ran the MV Superbike team here in America—I pepper him with questions: what fails first when a guy hammers on this engine? I asked him.

"Justafuckinarideit! Younotgonnafuckinarideithardenoughtohurtit! Youscarit!

With an older Italian motorcycle, the first rule of ownership is ironclad: never leave the house—heck, never even go around the block—without a cell phone in your pocket. Because with these bikes it isn’t if they’ll mysteriously stop, it’s when. Sooner or later you’ll need a friend with a truck, a buddy to help push, or the Internet to explain why your semi-prized machine has suddenly become a rolling, beautiful paperweight.

Every time I take the MV out, it pulls me back to those laps I did at Monza. I think it was only two, maybe three laps, but that didn’t matter. All I wanted back then was to be able to say I’d ridden an MV at Monza—just like like Hailwood, just like Surtees and, I guess, Ago.

Who knows what danger lurks inside the engines cases of a $500 MV? I'm almost, almost, at the point where I can ride it without adopting the Mike Baldwin-style grip on the left handlebar: two fingers always, always, on the clutch lever in case multiple hard parts decide to become one and lock in place in the engine cases.

So no, there was no blood on the Brutale when I got it—at least not that anyone could see. But every time I thumb the starter and roll onto the throttle, I can’t help but wonder if it’s still in there somewhere, hidden in the crankcases or soaked into the frame rails. Because an Italian motorcycle, especially one bought for five hundred bucks, always demands a little blood. Yours, someone else’s, or maybe both.