Runes: a set of characters used by the ancient Germanic peoples, also known as the alphabet of destiny.
Runes, Aldo Drudi and AC50.
Runes adorned Viking ships as superstitious symbols and have always been questioned as divination signs. Drawing three Runes answers the question: ”yes or no?”. The word Rune comes from the Norse run-, meaning “secret, whisper.”
Aldo Drudi has summarised all this in a helmet: the runes, the journey, superstition, experience, enrichment, destiny.

And this is how the idea of Aldo’s graphics emerged from the dream of travelling along new roads and new experiences.
The journey, however, also brings the deepest fears, inherent in the human being, with it. Like the Vikings, who were the first to face the inhospitable seas and lands of the Great North, marking their ships with these protective symbols. Likewise, Aldo wanted to protect the AC50 enterprise, enriching the helmet graphics with three runes. Here’s the meaning.

• Raido il talismano protettivo dei viaggiatori che li accompagna passo dopo a passo ad affrontare le paure e le sfide più dure.
• Algiz protection that is combined with Raido to increase its effectiveness. Algiz or Elk, noble and tireless animal that, with its horns, is able to defend its herd and resist difficulties.
• Vegvisir (Thor’s rune), a Scandinavian protection talisman also known as runic compass. A word that means “signpost”: the ancient legends narrate that the Icelandic Vikings traced this symbol on ships so as not to lose their way and know how to orient themselves in any weather condition.

AC50 needs all of this and represents all of this.
Drudi, however, did not stop at the symbolic meaning: the runes on the helmet become the elements that allow to define coloured areas.

• White, the union of all colours, which represents freedom, peace, purification, a new beginning. White is the light of the dream that guides the choices.
• Red, the colour of Italian racing cars and of the huge Norwegian icebreaker ships of the Great North.
• Black, the absence of colour, which mixes with carbon to accompany the use of Vegvisir. The Vikings drew it on the wooden keel, Drudi traced it on the fibre cap of the Acerbis Tarmak helmets.

Graphics rich in content and meanings. Aldo Drudi, master of imagination and creativity, fully understood and interpreted the spirit of the AC50 project. The final touch: two letters “A” were also inserted on the chin guard to recall the helmet that the warriors used in the past.

Travel, superstition, experience, enrichment, freedom, challenge.
The AC50 pilots are ready to draw the three Runes to have a charm for their adventure riding the AC50.
Before doing so, they will wear their own helmet, personalised with their own initials on the back of the cap.
Let the adventure begin!

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.
The AC50 project has instead, from the outset, shown that it can embody that “global” project able to bring together the skills of all, in the pursuit of achieving the common goal: to lead AC50 to conquer a world record with riders who drive in maximum safety, comfort and style.

AC50, a divide between the past era of incredible success and the future that awaits the company, has allowed OEM (Original Equipment Manufacture) engineers and designers to approach the Motorsport Division; the first, specialised in the design and production of tanks and the second in accessories and clothing.

OEM has designed an extremely original project and Motorsport Division designers have produced a completely original capsule collection for the occasion. New materials, shapes, fit and increased protection.

Moreover, the challenge that AC50 has decided to face will test the work of the project engineers, stress the vehicle mechanics and expose riders to all kinds of weather conditions.

Thousands of miles in the saddle demand high-performance clothing. Technicality alone is not enough. And here is the choice of new fabrics coupled with different construction techniques and the precise desire to achieve maximum safety and protection without having to sacrifice comfort and design.

The AC50 riders will wear the new sport-touring carbon Tarmak helmet, ECE2206 approved with Drudi Performance graphics (see content 7) and custom-designed clothing: CE AC50 jacket (two versions: one ventilated and one no wind), AC50 gloves, ON ROAD double class A technical jeans. The well-known Step Shoes worn on the three riders’ feet:

https://www.acerbis.com/en/motorsport/dual-road/boots/0023928

highly successful technical shoes, protective but also very comfortable and ergonomic, suitable for long rides in the saddle Invisible to the eye but in contact with Alicia, Andrea and Maurizio’s skin, the Dual Road technical Underwear

https://www.acerbis.com/en/motorsport/dual-road/underwear

that will protect them from the cold and the wind. And, considering the very long journey and the many hours to spend driving, rainproof clothing is also a must.

https://www.acerbis.com/it/motorsport/dual-road/antipioggia

For riders and all staff members who will follow the world record attempt, finally, also a rich supply of garments dedicated to free time that are already part of the Acerbis collection.

https://www.acerbis.com/en/motorsport/dual-road/casual

Now the pilots have only to close their bags and anxiously await the start.

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.

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, nor and recognition in case of success”. E. H. Shackleton

British explorer is looking for a crew for the Antarctic Expedition on the Endurance, ship destined to go down in history, to tell the most epic and wonderful exploration story of all time. His Journey has only one certainty: the unknown.

Mauritania
Chinguetti
Somewhere in the greatest desert of Earth
2023

Andrea Rastrelli, AC50 pilot, is standing on pegs of his rally bike with throttle fully opened. A glance at the Road Book, after the last dune, a drift on his left and back on the throttle. Every meter is a step into an unknown territory. The essence of challenges and adventure. He seems lost into those huge void spaces but in his mind, the final destination is clear: Dakar.

There are persons that, when it comes to dreams and passions, show the curious child that is in all of us. Andrea’s passion for motorsports, bikes and adventure knows no limits and it has bring him in the AC50 project. This time, sand is not waiting for him, but a long road toward North for something never tried before.

On the 10th June 2023 he will close the visor of his helmet.
It will be the beginning of a dream, where a vision will became reality.

“Men or women wanted for a long journey. Constant cold, heat, wind and rain. Long riding hours. Return only after thousands and thousand miles with, we hope, a World Record in our pocket”.

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. Now as then, engineers, depositaries of an ancient knowledge, follow every stage of developing a project.

Fabio Angeli, AC50 Project Engineer, capable of balancing calculus with testing, manual work with strategic analysis.

When you think “out of the box” to embark on a journey into the unknown, you are recalling the old times, the ancient fears of man and all the required challenges to overcome them. To do something that has never been done before means having to use a revolutionary mindset.

The courage to challenge yourself, to expose yourself, to experiment.

Thanks to the methodical approach and the know-how gained in Acerbis, Fabio Angeli has transformed the AC50 visionary dream into the glass-resin prototype ridden by Maurizio Vettor at Castelletto di Branduzzo Circuit and has ensured that from a prototype, the AC50 makes it to the first off tool PA6 part.

Through hands, every child treasures his first explorations of nature; those manual skills will later become the manifestation of human creativity.

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.

An unexpected amount of kilometers, crazy in some way

Three Hundreds and something laps. An out of scale number for many reasons: temperatures, weight, volume, track, uncertainty, fatigue, both mental and physical.

Thirty. Let’s try! Maybe fifty! Those were the numbers that everyone in the Team was aiming for even if, deep inside all of us, we knew that a visionary project like AC50 is perfect to be labelled as a record in every aspects. A challenge like those that, for whatever mysterious reasons, releases epic endorphins.

And this is it.

That day, after 50 laps, I entered a new dimension: challenge mode! “What about trying to make 70? Let’s try 100! 190, what do you think?”
304.
This is it.

Let’s start from the very beginning.
I heard about AC50 when it was just a sketch on a piece of paper and for my professional background, having the opportunity to be on board at the beginning of the design and development process towards a World Record, it is a dream come true. When you are also asked to fulfill the entire testing activity that lead to final validation, you immediately understand that the very best is still to come.

With beauty comes physical demand: extreme cold, heat, frozen fingers, sweat. Design validation through track and endurance test. After 304 laps, 1500 is the next number. 1500 are the kilometres done as Endurance Test between Lago d’Iseo and Valli Bergamasche.

This is a great moment for me, from both professional and human level. The possibility to develop a vehicle, to test my endurance, to work in a professional Team are the fuel of what I call Challenge. Fifty? No, no, let’s start to write history down: 304! Got it?

My name is Maurizio Vettor, I am a journalist, a pilot, a tester and I am after extreme challenges. But you know what? I am proud of this number: 304!

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.

Minds naturally flows to images: as a long motorcycles trip requires planning, the Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) that defines the milling path, requires to be carefully defined.

Rotomoulding tool is a sort of 3D puzzle, whose number of pieces (shells) are defined by the shape complexity. AC50 tool is a 4 shells one and 4 are the alluminium blocks required. 4 is a good wish, because, based on Numerology, it is the number of precision and safety. The huge AC50 alluminium blocks have scored an impressive weight: 2744,5kg. Four humongous monoliths waiting to be milled on 5 axis CNC machines. Millesimal accuracy to tell the dream of a Team to push toward a never attempted before World Record. 90 degrees corners disappear in rounds and new shapes.

It is now time for the Workshop, to build the frame that allows the tool to be used in Production. “It is a World Record tool and the biggest ever made for a motorcycle!”. Those are the words of Mattia Cancelli, Renato Paganessi and Enzo Modica, Acerbis OEM Workshop Technicians, whose skills, experience and craftsmanship allows more than 70 tools per year to be manufactured and ready for production. AC50 is also their challenge. Smiles, amazement and determination on their faces. This is Acerbis.

From one edge to infinite fillets.
From one to infinity.

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.

How does a project like this come to life?
During the golden years, there were the so-called “Battilastra”, literally metal sheet workers. They were highly skilled artisans, specialized in car shapes metal modelling. Just like sculptors of the Renaissance, they used only hammers, a chunk of wood, a sand bag and a pair of metal scissors. Thanks to them, coachbuilding became an art.

Massimo Assolari is Head of the CAD Area, with over 25 years of experience and hundreds of fuel tanks designed. For all of us he is just “Asso”, the Italian for ‘ace’. He is the link between Modeling and CNC machining. He supports Engineering throughout the development of each fuel tank. A kind of technological artisan, he aims for perfection in every detail. “AC50 has a surface complexity I have never experienced in my life Functionality goes hand in hand with beauty and I look for perfection in all my styling surfaces”.

Our story tells us that one day, early in the morning, lights in the Engineering Dept. were turned on, screens came back to life and quick and precise mouse clicks started to design lines and dots.
New surfaces, the ones of AC50 were combined, connected and joined.

What is the sound of designing?
Click, click… with the mouse at full speed towards the Record!

“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. Acerbis fuel tanks were winners from the very beginning, thanks to their impact resistance and freedom in shape, key factor of the rotomoulding production process. From those amazing adventures, our How-How has grown in many fields and today we are ready for something even bigger. A visionary adventure loyal to our attitude: the look for new challenges.

Acerbis Team is working to the next level. As Head of Engineering and Design, Mapo Carrara, with over 30 years of experience between Dakar, Six Days and Enduro Championship “[…] The very first time I hear of AC50 project, I was even thinking it to be just a joke. Achieving the project goals given by Antonio Sironi [Capo Progetto AC50][AC50 Project Manager] was, at first glance, impossible”. The Technical Office began with an analysis of the distribution of the volumes to verify the feasibility of the project and then continued the studies in Modeling. AC50

We are at the turning point.

This content is giving you an interesting puzzle piece to understand the AC50 project. By reading, you are probably asking yourself how AC50 can be at the same time an adventurous journey while also embracing the racing attitude. You will fully understand it only in June at the start. Be sure of one thing: whatever you love, journeys or competitions, you will not be disappointed. In AC50 you will find everything you have ever seen in Acerbis. We want to conquer a World Record, daring as far as possible.

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.

Let’s check them: a World Record, a motorcycle, the north, Acerbis’ fantasy and a Journey.

The image of our destination, that distant dot that we aim to reach, is defining itself with sharper lines.
Distance and mileage. Two words bound together.

What’s this challenge is all about?

We cannot share all the puzzle pieces because we are also getting ready for the day of the departure, we are testing and refining. A World Record demands precision and accuracy and reminds you that details are what really matter.

Look at the puzzle. Can you see a bike with three colours, a long road, a Team that you are starting to know, three riders with new technical gear, a Drudi Performance helmet, all of it towards north?

The distance will be impressive, but are we really sure that it will be the only key factor?

The puzzle is there, still to be finished and the pieces are many but every single content will get you closer to the 10th of June, the day of the departure!

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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. We talk about legends like Michael Doohan and Kevin Schwantz. Drudi has imagined the liveries of the fastest and most victorious bikes on Earth.
Designer, graphic designer, motorcyclist.

He was entrusted with the three colors of the AC50 project: red, white and black. These three words and the vision of the AC50 project were given to him. He has the task of creating the graphics that will wrap the Acerbis helmets and that will be worn to attempt our World Record.

Red: the color of constancy, energy, movement. Red is the color of the races for Italy but also that of the great North, of the Norwegian icebreakers.

White: the color of growth, openness, silence, cold.

Black: the non-color color. Powerful, overwhelming. Black was also the color of the bonnets of 1970s rally cars.

Three colours. A thousand evocations.

And so Aldo’s felt-tip pens, pencils and strokes are moving in search of the perfect graphic. His imagination is losing earthly contact, exploring new borders, towards unknown destinations.
Our journey, now, is also that of Aldo Drudi.
“May there be many summer mornings” said Kavafis and may our colors, enclosed in his graphics, be successful.

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