Benelli Leoncino 350 V-twin based on QJMotor SRV 350 cruiser By Ben Purvis
Design registrations filed by Benelli's parent company Qianjiang have revealed a planned V-twin Leoncino 350 model long before it's officially unveiled.
There's no mistaking the signature fuel tank design on the new bike, with a large circular badge set into a scooped-out section on each side to match the other models in the Benelli Leoncino family, and there's even readable 'Leoncino' script on each side of the machine, using the same font as the current Benelli models. However, the bike underneath these parts is very different to any other Leoncino variant.
At the moment, Benelli has a range of Leoncino-branded roadsters from 125 cc to 800 cc, all sharing a common set of styling cues. This new model breaks that mould, introducing a more cruiser-like stance and underpinnings, including a V-twin engine, a twin-shock chassis and a stubby-tailed set of bodywork with overtones of muscle-cruisers like the Yamaha V-Max.
The V-twin engine and steel frame appear to be borrowed from the SRV 350 cruiser made by Benelli's sister company QJMotor. The suspension, radiator, forward-mounted foot controls and even the wheels and brakes appear to be straight from the SRV 350, but the Benelli version adopts a less traditional cruiser style and gets a revised version of the 343 cc V-twin engine.
Visible engine changes include new cylinder heads with faux cooling fins and a forward-jutting air intake on the left-hand side. The twin stacked muffler looks much the same as the QJMotor version.
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In other news, new Chinese type-approval documents show that Benelli is preparing a new 902S that looks all but identical to the existing 752S, but with a huge increase in power.
The 752S's existing 754 cc parallel twin can trace its heritage back to the three-cylinder engine that revived the Benelli brand in the late 1990s. Taking a cylinder off the later 1131 cc version of that triple resulted in the twin that's still used today in a range of bikes including the Leoncino 800, Leoncino 800 Trail and the 752S - so the advent of a larger-capacity version could have implications for all of those models.
The new Chinese documents show that the 902S has a 904 cc capacity (the '902' name means '900 cc, 2 cylinder' rather than being an exact measure of the bike's engine size). The extra cubes come from the 92 mm bore (from 88 mm), along with stroke that's upped from 62 mm to 68 mm.
According to the same documents, the power increase that comes from this growth is remarkable. The paperwork says the new engine manages 77 kW (103 bhp), up from 56 kW (75 hp) for the current 754 cc version. Previously, Benelli has also filed documents for a 799 cc version of the engine making 71 kW (95 hp), but that has yet to appear in a production model.
