Vyrus Motorcycles

Vyrus was founded in 2001 in Coriano, Italy, by Ascanio Rodorigo, an engineer who had worked at Bimota as a race mechanic through the 1970s before leaving in 1985 to run his own component-building venture, ARP. Rodorigo had been closely involved in developing Bimota's hub-center-steered Tesi, and at Vyrus he pushed that concept further, launching his first bike at the Padova Show around a tuned, air-cooled Ducati 900SS desmo engine wrapped in a distinctive double "Omega" frame with hub-center steering front and rear, in place of a conventional telescopic fork. Vyrus has remained a tiny, exclusivist manufacturer ever since, building motorcycles such as the 984 C3 2V and the electric-powered Alyen 988 in very small numbers for buyers seeking a genuinely different chassis layout rather than a mainstream sportbike.