The Cagiva C594 was a track bike produced by the Varese house in the mid-90s. Its activity was brief -from 1994 to 1995- in the Motorcycling World Championship in the 500 cc category. The Cagiva C594 was the only European bike able to fight with the Japanese manufacturers, absolute dominators of the category since the late 80s.

With a relatively brief experience as an independent manufacturer of motorcycles, in 1994 it created possibly the most beautiful racing motorcycle in the world.The Cagiva C594 was also a very high-tech machine, with programmable EPROM chips for variable ignition timing, a sophisticated fuel-injection system, electronically controlled semi-active suspension, and even an experimental traction control system, which could cut out one or two of the V4’s cylinders in certain situations, to reduce wheelspin. All this, back in the early 1990s!

But it was a long road to the Cagiva C594. The Italian manufacturer really started to appear in the public eye when Randy Mamola signed to race for the Italian factory in 1988.Since then, other talented racers such as John Kocinski, Alex Barros, Ron Haslam, four-time GP champ’ Eddie Lawson, Doug Chandler and Matt Mladin, brought the factory on leaps and bounds year by year.

Why is it named “the C594”? It was formed from the combination of the letter "C", of Cagiva, and the numbers "5", of the category in which it participated in the World Championship, and "94", the year in which it was built.

The bike was fitted with a control unit with 3 different mappings with the ignition and the engine a counter with display of the digital band with fondoscala to 14,000 rpm, the swingarm back to aluminum, while the final part of the league will re-solution in carbon, the engine is not as powerful as those of its Japanese rivals, but improves manageability.

The bike was equipped with a 498cc engine, kicking out 85 hp at 12,500 RPM.The top speed was its biggest issue, but it was fast and with great acceleration thanks to its light weight and good set-up. It weighed 125kg, and the mix of the Michelin tires and Showa shocks set the bike apart from the rivals.

Cagiva has achieved its best positions at Hungaroring (1992), at Laguna Seca (1993) and at Eastern Creek (1994).Just with this last triumph, Cagiva was on the verge of bankruptcy.The dream to dominate the World Championship of Motorcycling was destroyed, but an iconic motorcycle was born.

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