Bistella – The ExhaustNotes Blog

By Joe Berk

Imagine my surprise: I thought there would be but one 10-cylinder motorcycle. I thought this would be a quick blog. There’s the Dodge Viper-powered Tomahawk that was newsworthy maybe 10 years ago. But wait, there’s more (as my hero Billy Mays used to say). I found two more poking around on the Internet.

Two Dodge V10 Motorcycles

You may remember a Dodge Viper powered V-10 motorcycle a couple of decades ago. It was a weird one with two wheels upfront and two wheels in back. Between that feature and the weight, the handling must have been atrocious.

I thought Dodge had just built one as a showpiece, but according to online references they actually built and sold nine of the things (at a price of $550,000). The Dodge boys called it the Tomahawk. It has a theoretical top speed of 450 mph. Take a look:

Allen Millyard, a builder who created a number of mega-cylinder motorcycles and who has been featured in a few of our previous ¿Quantos Pistones? blogs, also built a Dodge V-10 motorcycle. It is more conventional (if a 10-cylinder can be called conventional) wheel layout, with one at the front and one at the rear.

Here’s a YouTube about the Millyard V-10. It’s cool, as it shows a 172-mph, two-up run.

The Bistella

The Bistella is an unusual 10-cylinder, 500cc, supercharged two-stroke , Jawa-based motorcycle designed by Czech engineer Marek Foltis. It’s a weird one, and I guess Foltis is living proof that if you have the talent, nothing is impossible. The bike used the cylinders and pistons from ten 50cc Jawas. Wow. Just wow. Take a listen: