iconicmotorbikeauctions.com
I'm breaking with my trend of posting Craigslist bikes that anyone can buy with this. However, it was available to the buying public, even if in a limited manner. Possibly one of the rarest production motorcycles you'll ever find.
Only 35 were ever built. This one sold at auction last year at $20,000
Insanely cheap for what it is and what it represents. So the story goes, when Soichiro Honda was getting his company ready to race on the world championship level, he toured all the major European manufacturers to develop ideas for how to best approach this endeavor. While touring the FB Mondial factory, he remarked to Count Boselli that the race carburetors being used on their Grands Prix machines might be a good start for his program.
Mr. Honda offered to buy a set from Count Boselli but the Count would have none of that. He offered to send Mr. Honda a set for free as a gentleman. As it turned out, FB Mondial was pulling out of Grands Prix after that year. When Mr. Honda arrived back in Japan after his tour of Europe, a crate arrived that contained the promised carburetors but they were still attached to one of the Grands Prix winning Mondial racers.
That racer sits in the Honda Museum to this day. At the very beginning to signify its importance to the Honda story. Thus, when Mondial proposed to restart production of a road going motorcycle, Honda repayed them for their help in the beginning by offering to supply them with engines for their new venture.
Thus the Mondial Piega is powered by an RC-51 engine. This is a rare thing indeed. Not just for the miniscule numbers built, but Honda does not typically supply engines to their competition. I can think of maybe one other......Kenny Roberts' Proton KR5 equipped with an RC211V 5 cylinder.
There was one other.....some guy in SoCal attempted to restart a motorcycle company using RC-51 engines too.....but that never got farther than a concept as far as I recall. That company went bankrupt before producing a single road bike.
Thus, the Mondial Piega is a very rare object of motolust. So few were made and with their connection to Honda it is possibly the rarest of rare. I don't think there are many others out there with fewer examples available. Possibly the MotoGuzzi MGS01. Maybe. Even Fritz Egli and Arturo Magni built more examples of their specials than Mondial built Piegas before going bankrupt.