THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HUSQVARNA MOTO

[MotoFactory]

By Gunnar Lindstrom

 

Husqvarna is not only one of the oldest motorcycle makers in the world, it’s one of the oldest continuously operated manufacturing operations of any kind. Prior to building its first motorcycle in 1903, the mill at Huskvarna, Sweden, produced firearms and other goods dating all the way back to the 17th century. But, can you realistically say that the Husqvarna of 2025 is the same company that produced muskets for King Charles XI of Sweden in 1689? No motorcycle maker has such a complicated and serpentine history. It’s a story of stunning success, dark chapters and forgotten years. Here’s a brief overview of one of the greatest legacies in the motorcycle world.

The Silverpilen of the ’50s was the bike that initially gave Husqvarna a toehold in the motocross world.

THE RISE OF HUSQVARNA MOTORCYCLES

As with most motor companies of the early 20th century, Husqvarna Moto’s formative years were interrupted by World Wars and huge economic swings. Some of those initial products were more bicycle than motorcycle; others were produced in partnership with other factories of the time. Through all of this time, the company’s sewing machine line was the biggest part of a multi-faceted business. It wasn’t until after World War II that the motorcycle company we know today began to develop its own distinct personality. In 1955, Husqvarna introduced a new, lightweight, 175cc motorcycle that they called “Silverpilen,” or “Silver Arrow.” It was a huge hit because it was under 166 pounds and could therefore be ridden by 16-year-olds. It was light and fast, and although originally designed as a road bike, it could easily be modified for the new sport of motocross. The factory built a few test bikes with better suspension and a full 250cc engine, and Rolf Tibblin was immediately successful on this bike. He became the European champion in 1959. Torsten Hallman soon joined the team and won his first 250 World Championship in 1962. 

These race bikes were not authorized by the corporate board and therefore built in a sort of factory underground. Some of the work was done after hours, under the table and paid for by either sewing machine or chainsaw accounts. The bikes and their riders were popular all around the factory and it was relatively easy to get help from the various departments, such as machining and heat treatment. As opposed to the dreary regular routine, employees thought it was fun and exciting to help support the race team in a sort of secret and underground way. And some riders would occasionally stop and talk, especially Rolf Tibblin when he was test riding a bike, and doing wheelies up and down the entrance road.

The successes of the motocross team and their underground operation created great PR for Husqvarna, and eventually convinced the corporate board that for 1963, 100 MX bikes could be built using Silverpilen leftover parts, such as wheel hubs, fuel tanks and frames, sitting in warehouses.  

So for 1963, motocross motorcycles became an official Husqvarna product, although only 100 were made. Torsten Hallman said they were the most competitive motocross bikes available at that time, partly because of their low weight. All of them sold easily. And such was the success that the board allowed the newly created motorcycle group to make another 200 for 1964. Now, Husqvarna was officially back in the motorcycle business. In 1965, the motocross bikes were profitable and sales increased steadily, partly due to Edison Dye convincing the factory to sell bikes in the U.S. in 1966. The factory had been reluctant to sell motocross bikes to a country where there was no motocross. That was the official line.

The addition in 1967 and ’69 of the very successful 360 and 400cc models created a new dilemma. The MX bikes were now taking up substantial manufacturing capacity at the plant.  The machining and heat treatment of gears created bottlenecks on the assembly line as well as in the frame shop. These were the days of tremendous success with names like Hallman, Tibblin, Kring and Åberg.

The first big year for Edison Dye’s U.S. Husqvarna business was 1967. He imported the sport of MX to the U.S. in order to sell his Husqvarnas. There were only a few 1966 models brought into the U.S.

1977–1986, THE ELECTROLUX YEARS

In 1977 the entire Husqvarna concern was purchased by the huge Swedish investment company Electrolux that saw great business opportunity in the kitchen white goods and chainsaws. Some say several of the Electrolux board members did not realize that they had also bought the motorcycle product line in the transaction. The motorcycle group was now reorganized into a separate business unit. Husqvarna Motorcycles AB and all of management, R&D, manufacturing, and assembly were moved to an off-site location. Electrolux was, after all, an investment company, and if the motorcycle division could not consistently show a profit, they would be disposed of.

And that was exactly what happened. Although the financial picture of Husqvarna Motorcycles had gradually improved, it was too little, too late. So, after nine years, Electrolux was ready to unload the division they never realized the PR value of, especially for chainsaws in the U.S. 

The 1975 Husqvarna 250GP CR is reputed to be just like the bike that Bob Hannah rode prior to Yamaha.

THE CAGIVA PERIOD

Husqvarna’s name was licensed to Cagiva S.p.A Italy from 1986 to 2007. Husqvarna had been one of the early developers of the modern lightweight four-stroke engine and had won an impressive number of off-road events in the early ’80s. That caught the attention of Giovanni Castiglioni, the owner of Cagiva. He was struggling to establish Cagiva as a brand. The name was from the first two letters of the people and the town where they were located. Castiglione, Giovanni and Varese. He recognized the prestige of the Husqvarna brand and got a license from Electrolux to use it exclusively in the motorcycle world. Cagiva took over a well-organized company and a dedicated dealer network. They relocated manufacturing to Italy and installed their own management in the U.S. and Europe, and within weeks it was obvious that Cagiva’s new business model was quite different from the established Husqvarna version. Many dealers resigned and took up KTM instead. Spare parts supply became a concern in the U.S., and dealers were often left hanging waiting for parts that were late or never showed up. In the mid-1990s Husqvarna U.S. formed a partnership with the Fast by Ferracci road racing organization in Pennsylvania to manage the U.S. distribution of bikes and parts. Larry Ferracci had a much better understanding of the U.S. motorcycle business, and provided knowledge and stability, something that had been missing all along. From that point on, a slow but steady resurgence of Husqvarna started. It was generally thought that the Ferracci organization should have been appointed distributors from the beginning.

The original Swedish Husky four-stroke inspired the birth of Husaberg. KTM acquired that company 10 years later and used the technology to jump-start its own four-stroke racing line.

At first Cagiva ran a very strong racing effort in Europe with two-strokes in motocross under both the Cagiva and Husqvarna banner with several world titles as a result. Jan Witteveen was a two-stroke master designer, tuner and manager. But, this was a time when four-strokes were coming into the market. So, Husqvarna launched a whole new line of four strokes and competed successfully for the Enduro World Championships, winning over 60 World Championships in various classes in enduro and Supermoto primarily run in Europe and somewhat at the expense of the motocross side.

But finance was Cagiva’s weak side. Some years not a single Husqvarna bike was built due to lack of money to buy parts for assembly or filling spare parts orders. Husqvarna relied almost exclusively on outside vendors to produce and deliver parts just in time for assembly at the Cassinetta factory.

Racing was similarly outsourced. Alessio Chiodi’s 125cc World Championships were managed by the Corrado Maddii organization, and the successful enduro team was led by CH Racing and Fabrizio Azzalin. In late 2006 the financial situation was so critical that Mr. Castiglioni  was forced to accept an offer of $100 million from BMW Motorrad for the entire operation, including the bikes, the Cassinetta facility and worldwide operations. This started another remarkable time in the Husqvarna history book.

Husqvarna was a pioneer in the early development of four-strokes for off-road competition. When manufacturing was moved to Italy, the four-stroke models were redesigned, but the architecture of the original Swedish design was still visible.

2007–2013, THE BMW CHAPTER

In 2005 engineers at BMW Motorrad in Munich, Germany, had designed a new engine and frame that they must have presented to top management as revolutionary. The major breakthrough on the new design had resolved the age-old problem of the rear chain tension varying with different swingarm positions. BMW engineers designed an engine where the swingarm pivot and the rear sprocket were on the same shaft, and voila! Problem solved through clever German engineering. The frames were at first constructed out of stainless steel tubing with an aluminum swingarm and were very stiff. There were also several other features, such as the clutch mounted on the crankshaft and therefore small and light. The induction and air cleaner were where the fuel tank normally is, and the actual fuel tank was under the seat. In addition, the layout of the internal transmission needed an additional shaft for the countershaft arrangement, so the engine rotated in the opposite direction of a typical layout. This would prove to cause concern later on.

Jacky Martens rode an Italian-built Husqvarna to the 500cc World MX GP Championship in 1993. It was the first MX championship for a four-stroke since 1965.

To be cost-competitive, BMW chose to have the new engine built by Kymco in Taiwan. This new bike was indeed a revolutionary design, and they thought they had out-engineered the rest of the motorcycle world, and this would allow BMW to break into off-road where they weren’t represented at the time. It was called the G449X, then later the G450X, and was developed by the BMW test team in local German enduros. There was even a brief attempt at motocross. By 2008 they were ready to go big into the Enduro World Championship by hiring Husqvarna Enduro World champion Anders Eriksson.  

BMW spent a great deal of time and money developing the G450X prior to the purchase of Husqvarna. As it turned out, having the countershaft and the swingarm pivot concentric did not by itself guarantee success. In the 1980s several factories studied the optimal location of the countershaft sprocket. After much work, the countershaft ended up pretty much in the same place as before. It isn’t known how much homework the BMW team had done on benchmarking other dirt bikes for things like frame rigidity, weight distribution and the suspension-motion ratio. The fact that the engine rotated in the opposite direction of the competition added another variable.

This new model line needed a sales outlet that didn’t compete with the established BMW street bike network. Seeing that Husqvarna in Italy was in financial distress and BMW had a kitty of cash to spend, it made sense to purchase the entire Cagiva facility—buildings and all—get the license to use the Husqvarna name, and add the new BMW dirt bike to the lineup. As soon as the purchase agreement was complete, BMW transferred German staff to Italy to manage the operation. 

The results from Eriksson’s 2008 season were modest—some would say poor, but in typical top-down authority, BMW thought that Eriksson was really now past his peak, and his contract was not renewed. Instead, for 2009, they contracted Enduro World champions David Knight and Juha Salminen, both multi-time World Enduro champions. But, despite how hard the riders tried, the results were not there. The team did not want to listen to any suggestions the riders had for changes or improvements. The most vocal of the riders was David Knight, who resigned after only six months, bought a Kawasaki, and immediately started winning again. But this did not stop the BMW team, who thought they had out-engineered the entire motorcycle community. Salminen hung on through 2010 but could only deliver an eighth overall in the Enduro World Championship that year.

So, what was the problem? The riders said the bike felt too stiff, it was difficult to get traction, and because there was no protection of the bare engine up front, it had to be ridden carefully so as not to damage the starter motor, clutch, ignition or shift lever. Anders Eriksson spent a chapter of his book to describe the problems and how unresponsive the team was to suggestions from the riders for improvements.

One of the most significant bikes to come out of the Husky factory in the ’80s was the 1983 TX510. It demonstrated that a four-stroke could be competitive with two-strokes of the day.

MEANWHILE, IN THE FIELD

In the five-year plan, Husqvarna would continue to provide their lineup as before, refreshed by BMW money, then add the BMW G450X that would be built in Italy and renamed the Husqvarna TE449. The strategy here was to replicate BMW’s purchase of the Mini automobile brand, where customers could eventually graduate to the real thing, a BMW.

The first item on the list was to build a new Italian chassis around the Kymco engine. A more conventional frame was decided on, but the BMW concept of high-air intake and fuel under the seat was retained. In order to carry enough fuel, the seat height was at first too high. Then, an extra plastic fuel container was made available located behind the cylinder. The first prototype of the TE449 was ready in early 2010, but things did not work out very well. Although the Husqvarna lineup sold reasonably well, the main issue was that the bikes were too expensive to produce compared to what they could be sold for at retail. So, purchasing was the first thing to be attacked by the new owners by using known German suppliers for minor items. That did little to lower the overall cost. A TC449 (motocross configuration) and TX449 (cross-country) were added, as well as a 511.

After the first transfer to Cagiva in 1986, no two-strokes of Swedish design or origin were manufactured. The models that carried the Cagiva name were re-badged as Huskys.

It is well understood in Europe that German managers micromanaging an Italian factory is a recipe for conflict, which is exactly what happened. More conflict followed when BMW hired expensive consultants who proved to be either unqualified or too political, or both. The common language was English, although the Germans tried to teach the Italians key phrases in German. Morale sank further, and there were reports of Italian workers sabotaging the German effort by hiding bikes prepared for a dealer meeting the next day. In general, the Italians regarded the Germans to be there on vacation, to eat good food, drink good wine and watch Italian girls.

The Kymco-built BMW motor found its way into the Husqvarna-branded model line but without the concentric countershaft design. The motor eventually was used for Hero’s Dakar Rally bikes.

NEXT STOP: MATTIGHOFEN

The financial losses by BMW Husqvarna continued to build, and by 2013, they had spent over $240 million to keep the factory going. German management saw no alternative but to find a willing buyer. But who? The product lineup had not kept pace with the competition. BMW literally had no assets other than the Cassinetta facility to sell. The Castiglionis were anxious to take back the operation, no doubt for very little money, but Husqvarna had no confidence that they were capable of resurrecting the brand financially, so they could easily have canceled the use of the name Husqvarna at this point, which would have been the end of our story. But, a license agreement was reached with Stefan Pierer and his KTM management group. It was for the use of the name only; they did not carry over any intellectual property or parts from BMW to KTM; although, it is thought that KTM took over some short-term responsibility for BMW warranties. And, the price was right—next to nothing!

Juha Salminen was hired to ride the BMW G450X, and eventually ended up on the Kymco/BMW/Husqvarna hybrid.

The 230 workers at Cassinetta staged protests, but the horse was already out of the barn. They were left high and dry. The Cassinetta facility was eventually sold to the Chinese Shineray Group, who also purchased the SWM brand in Italy and now produces a lineup of bikes in Cassinetta under the SWM label.

Now, after 12 years of Husqvarna with Austrian parents, the brand seems to be thriving, having won several MX World Championships. Of course, it is a clone of the original KTM brand, but that business plan has worked out well for now. As this is written, KTM is going through well-publicized financial difficulties, but it is unlikely they will drop the Husqvarna brand; the benefits easily outweigh the liabilities. One way or another, the Husqvarna motorcycle brand will continue to survive. It’s a legacy that just won’t die.

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