TRAVEL
DIARY

Official: 4,183.8 km from Albino to the North Cape is the greatest distance driven on a single tank of fuel by a motorcycle (prototype)

Set out with us, towards our Ithaca.

Reaching the North Cape with only a single tank of fuel is the thrilling project launched by Acerbis to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

This is the dialogue that introduces us to Maestro Bertolucci’s poignant film, bringing with it the profound essence of the Journey.

The calculations, mathematical model, estimates invariably reach the same result: the tank to be designed and built for this enterprise must hold at least 100 litres.

4328 km: is the distance between Albino and the North Cape; the distance between the factory dream and achieving it; the distance where our Itaca is to be found.

The beauty of landscapes. The feeling of freedom. The narrow and winding roads. Weather conditions that vary without warning.

Madrid, September 2011: ‘My motorbike was so loaded up that I didn’t dare move my head to left or right when I reached the last slip road before the motorway.

Dreams do not come true by chance: not only do planning and attention to detail make the difference, but tips the scale towards success. AC50 is not just a visionary idea. It is also a tank made with rotational technology.

After ideas, dreams, calculations, style drafts, modelling, tests, validations, meetings, many hours of work, the time has come. The mould exits the Acerbis Workshop, like a new Apollo 11 towards its launch pad. This shimmering 3D puzzle, built of aluminium from the ground up, it embodies Acerbis’ vision.

Runes: a set of characters used by the ancient Germanic peoples, also known as the alphabet of destiny.
Runes, Aldo Drudi and AC50.

Bike and rider. An inseparable binomial. Acerbis has always dressed and protected both with plastic, clothing and accessories. Two worlds that do not make sense to exist one without the other but that whose respective R&D departments work in parallel in Acerbis, without ever creating the opportunity for real cooperation.

United Kingdom
London
Baker Street
1914

A gentleman, smartly dressed, is walking in one of the busiest street of London. Screams of a newsboy, at Dorset Street’ corner, attracts his attention. He stops and with a penny, buy The Times latest news and walks away.

The Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Roman aqueducts, the Colosseum, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Great Wall. These are examples of what ancient engineering has achieved.

Today, looking at the job done by Acerbis’ engineers, thoughts naturally flow to those breathtaking masterpieces, but also to the Renaissance studios, where artisans were capable of turning ideas into physical items.

304 track laps.
Three hundreds and four! 300! 4! Got it??
My name is Maurizio Vettor, and I am proud of this number.
Those three digits are the laps done on the AC50 in one single day, on the Castelletto Circuit.

AC50 is both pragmatism and fantasy, engineering and poetry, craftsmanship and automation. It’s time to enter a new field, full of numbers and calculus. The 3D data you have read last week, is ready for the next step: the tool construction that will make Acerbis AC50 Journey possible.

Sound is everywhere in our life, but what does designing sound like?
Without it, nothing can become real.
Without it, AC50 would have just remained a wonderful daydream.

“What will remain of these ‘80s” and old songs says.
Well, without any doubts, the golden era of the greatest desert races and of the very first Acerbis fuel tanks. Great distances and mechanics at their limit.

The box is full of puzzle pieces. They are there, randomly placed. Some of them are starting to define shapes and images, providing some important clues.

Without going through the introductions or even the start, the thought runs straight, at full speed, towards an image. Aldo is the one who conceived and designed the graphics of the helmets and suits of the most famous riders in the world.

Henry Ford once said “Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”.

The idea is born from an individual who shares with another one. The Team takes it to success.
What is exceptional, is the capacity of an individual to bring himself into the project.

The Golden Ticket is the key to start the engine of the vehicle we have chosen, the item to lift a never built before motorcycle from the side stand, just before lowering the visor and heading North. 100 Golden Ticket will allow their owners to access a restricted area of the ac50.acerbis.com website with special contents and the possibility to discover the destination of AC50.

This Golden Ticket is just waiting to be picked up.

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A journey, an adventure and a project have one thing in common: ‘richness’.
This increases with experience, with knowledge and with emotions. Drawing new trajectories, travelling new roads, will allow us to get to know new places but also to put our work, body and mind to test.

It going to be an epic challenge that we will live with enthusiasm and courage because we believe that this is the only way to achieve goals, even those seemingly unattainable.

White line on the road stretches for thousands of miles. Clean. Clear. True. Design with precision. For bikers is the link to reality because a motorcycles journey is first of all an intense and insightful experience…

We have come a long way in these 50 years.

We have been inspired and spurred to progress towards a new way of designing, developing and producing what is in our DNA. We hope that we had a long way to go to build on our success in the world of two-wheelers and other sports.