Tehuelche! A History, Part 2

by Vladimir Nekola

Tehuelche in Motormovil

At the beginning of 1960 Tehuelche was on its way to be manufactured in the Motormovil factory. This same factory imported “spare parts” of Legnano, Bicicletas Legnano, DEMM and Garelli. Tehuelche was the only bike that was completely created in Argentina, and that was the attraction point for Natalio Cortes, the owner of Motormovil. With the Tehuelche, he showed the government that he had a local product. By this time the government had become aware of the trickery with the importation of “spare parts” and was beginning to put an end to it by imposing various regulations. Cortes continued fighting this development with little success.

By 1961, Raffaldi and Fattorini, tired of dealing with the careless approach to production of the Tehuelche as well as failures to receive payments, left the factory. They settled back in the original workshop that they had in San Martin where they had repaired motorcycles, and Raffaldi had produced the first prototype that became the Tehuelche. Meanwhile, Motormovil continued making Tehuelches, paying royalties to the two Italian partners.

Basically, the model stayed the same over the years with some minor aesthetic changes. Sport and Super Sport models appeared in 1962, with the only difference between the two being the color scheme and the inclusion of a speedometer that the Sport model lacked. By 1963, a Tehuelche-Legnano model was introduced. Again, the differences were minor: a different color scheme and a different shaped gas tank. In 1964, and for the first time, the engine was modified: the overhead cam was controlled by a chain instead of the regular gears in the original model.  Also, a multidisc clutch was introduced instead of the original single disc. This model lasted only six months because Motormovil closed and that was the end of the Tehuelche production.

The demise of Motormovil

When the government passed legislation in 1962 stopping the importation of “spare parts”, there were still containers full of these parts sitting in the Buenos Aires port. So, foreign bikes continued to appear on the market resulting in tough competition for the Tehuelche. Eventually, foreign bikes disappeared from the market and this could have provided an advantage for the factory that produced a totally local motorcycle, and there was no marketing reason to stop production. It could have been one of the few bikes available. However, production was not profitable enough for Motormovil. The bike became obsolete – the engine was outdated; customers wanted something more durable and easier to fix, like the two-stroke engines found in the Puma Cuarta Serie (with a 125 Sachs engine). The Tehuelche was no more.

The number of Tehuelches produced in the seven years of its lifetime is just an estimate because factory records do not exist. The lack of continuity in production in both factories makes the estimate even more imprecise. Based on interviews with surviving factory employees 50 years later, it is estimated that 1,200 to 1,300 Tehuelches were produced in the original refrigerator company, 3,000 to 4,000 units came from the Motormovil phase. In contrast, 11,000 motorcycles were imported as “spare parts” in 1960 alone. These numbers explain why so few Tehuelches exist today.

The Racing Competition

As mentioned, the Tehuelche prototype was born as a racing motorcycle; so when the bike hit the market later as a utilitarian machine, many customers immediately tuned their bikes for racing. The first recorded participation of a Tehuelche in a race was in November 1957 at the Buenos Aires racetrack. This was an international race for the 125 cc class. No record can be found about the performance of the Tehuelche in this race.

Tehuelches participated in many other races around the country, mainly on dirt circuits. According to personal accounts Tehuelche outperformed the competition in other classes besides 75cc. Riders who were aiming to become racers quickly realized that the Tehuelche was the motorcycle to have. The next racing record appears for a race in June 1958 for the Premio de la Industria (Industry Award).  The particularity of this race was that only strictly standard motorcycles were allowed. Tehuelche won first, second and fourth place. The winner’s average of 74.826 km/h showed that this little machine could reach a remarkable maximum speed of more than 80 km/h.

The next milestone was in April 1959 in the First Open South American Motorcycle Championship in Rio Negro province including local and international participants from five countries, with more than a hundred motorcycles in different categories. Tehuelche won in the 75, 100 and 125 cc categories! These motorcycles were tuned by none other than Raffaldi and Fattorini. The Tehuelche factory took notice of that and decided to add a sticker on the gas tank commemorating such a feat.

After this well publicized achievement, another pair of tuners, the Segatto brothers, made their mark with the Tehuelche #116 that in over eight years won many races, two national championships and two runners-up. By this time the displacement of the racing Tehuelches had reached 100 cc; the 75 cc category having been discontinued.

This new displacement became available thanks to a racing kit created by Juan Raffaldi that was offered to Tehuelche owners who were interested in racing. This kit consisted of 100 cc piston and cylinder, an oversized cylinder head, a much-needed external oil pump and a multidisc clutch. The rest of the engine remained the same. Raffaldi thought about adding a fourth gear but didn’t, due to the excessive cost as well as the fact that in order to be homologated as a racing engine a minimum of 50 units had to have been produced. And that was way over the two partners’ modest capabilities.

By 1967, at the end of the Tehuelche’s racing career, the bikes reached a maximum speed of 132 km/h and 11,200 rpms, a significant improvement from the original 75 km/h and 6,500 rpms.  But this level of performance was not enough to compete against the more efficient two-stroke engines that had started winning races in Argentina as well as around the world. The four-stroke engine was quickly becoming obsolete for racing. This marked the end of the Tehuelche which remained dormant until I started researching the story of this motorcycle, and after 20 years finally produced a book that covers the history, racing performance, and characteristics of the bike, plus interviews with people who worked at the factory, racers and bike owners.

The Tehuelche Goes to Motogiro d’Italia 2024!  

In 2024, 75 years after its first predecessor appeared, a motorcycle called Tehuelche stood out in one of the most important motorcycle events in Europe, the Motogiro d’Italia. This event consists of six stages covering 1600 kms. Three Tehuelches participated in this grueling event. They didn’t win any prizes or arrive first in any of the stages, but they did finish. In fact, they finished the race in admirable working state, something that cannot be said of many of the other bikes that participated, all of which were bigger, and many more modern than the Tehuelche. At 75cc it was the smallest displacement engine among the 180 participating bikes. Because the Tehuelche was from 1957, it entered the event in the most prestigious category, Rievocazione Storica (Historic Reenactment).

Reviving the Tehuelche by writing a book about it, restoring the bikes that appear in that book and showing what it can achieve to an international crowd in its creators’ birthplace was a dream come true. What else could one ask? Only one thing: that a Tehuelche is exhibited in a public museum outside of Argentine. I’m working on it!

For more information, see:

Tehuelche Book

Tehuelche Motorcycle Website