[tacticalogic]

"A Moto-Guzzi customer is older, gray hair, heavier-set, rides by himself, comes in alone. Guzzi riders are different from riders of other brands. The bikes are good but not fast. You don’t buy them for performance but for uniqueness."

Not sure if it's true, but the story I heard on Moto-Guzzi was that it was the result of a German engineer and the son of an Italian industrialist who served together and became friends during WWII. The German (Guzzi) had come up with the lateral V-twin design and showed it to his friend. They planned to go into business after the war building them. Guzzi was killed in the war and the Italian went ahead and created the company and built the bikes, naming them after the designer.

[uglybiker]

No Germans and it was three Italians who served in WWI. One was shot down during the war and the eagle emblem was adopted in his memory. The name comes from Carlo Guzzi who was the brains behind the operation. It might have helped that is father put up some of the startup money. ;-)

The transverse twin didn't come about until much later in the 1950's as part of a three wheeled concept vehicle for the Italian military. That didn't pan out so they decided to use it in bikes. The first one to come out was the V700 in 1965.