Major honours
Gilera is the manufacturer that defined the early world championship. Umberto Masetti gave the company its first 500cc title in 1950, and Geoff Duke, the 1951 champion on a British single-cylinder Norton, crossed over to Italy and won three straight titles in 1953, 1954 and 1955, before Libero Liberati added a final crown in 1957. The core was a transverse four-cylinder engine, a layout that instantly surpassed anything a big single could produce and became the standard every Italian rival, including MV Agusta, copied. In 1957 Bob McIntyre swept both the Junior and Senior Isle of Man TT and became the first rider ever to lap the course at over 100 mph. That same year, though, the Italian manufacturers agreed to a joint Grand Prix withdrawal over rising costs, and Gilera disappeared at its peak. The brand later passed to the Piaggio Group and won further world titles in 125cc in 2001 and 250cc in 2008.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
Gilera versus MV Agusta was the whole of the Italian multi-cylinder era of the 1950s, and Gilera's withdrawal in 1957 left MV a seventeen-year empty throne. Before that, the technical argument between the British single and the Italian four had been the sport's central storyline.