Design, development and marketing activities are carried out at the Benelli QJ headquarters in Pesaro, Italy, in synergy with the parent company of Wenling China where motorcycles are produced.

After losing her husband, the widow Teresa Boni Benelli invested all of the family capital into the business in the hope that it would offer stable work for her six sons: Giuseppe, Giovanni, Francesco, Filippo, Domenico and Antonio ("Tonino").

[citation needed] But the most successful engine, which made Benelli known in the national and international field, was the 175 cm3 4-stroke with "cascade" distribution and overhead camshaft of 1927, a bold and sophisticated solution that soon became the "trademark" of the Pesaro house.

Giuseppe, in order to beat the competition, did not waste time and completely reinterpreted that project introducing an ingenious simple solution to eliminate the negative effects of thermal expansion that afflicted these applications.

The screws were tightened so as not to "crush" the castle, but so that they could leave a play of a few tenths of a millimeter sufficient to the two "blocks" (folder-castle/ cylinder-head) to flow over each other in the phase of expansion by the effect of heat, without interfering and creating those deformations that would have made the system unreliable.

255634 of 29 Oct. 1927 "Arrangement for forming and fixing the transmission box for controlling the distribution shaft at the head in combustion engines")[citation needed] Two years after that, using a version specially designed for competitions, Tonino "the terrible" took to the track.

This motorcycle was intended to compete in the 1940 season to try to bissare the Benelli's success in the 1939 Isle of Man TT Lightweight 250 cc race, but the outbreak of the Second World War will frustrate all efforts and this solution (banned in the post-war period) will never be used in official competitions.

[citation needed] At the end of the conflict, much of the factory was destroyed, the equipment dispersed or damaged and it took three or four years to restart the business in a situation of precariousness and misery.

[citation needed] Giuseppe Benelli, after irreconcilable disputes with his brothers about productive strategies, split from the company to found first the BBC Automobili in 1946 and after MotoBi in 1952.

In the sixties he chose two different routes to sell overseas: via the importer Cosmopolitan and with the Montgomery Ward and presented the following models: Towards the end of the 1960s, the arrival of Japanese manufacturers caused a crisis in the European motorcycle industry.

The advent of competition from Japan led to Benelli products (still largely of single cylinder pushrod design) losing popularity as they were perceived as old-fashioned in comparison to Hondas of the era which sported overhead cam engines with electric starters, in much the same way as the British motorcycle manufacturers such as Norton, BSA and Triumph were affected in the larger capacity sector.

[citation needed] The Benelli, in obvious economic difficulty, will be purchased by the Italian-Argentine industrialist Alejandro de Tomaso, who was undoubtedly one of the most discussed and powerful figures in Italy in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

[citation needed] The Italian-Argentine manager, in order to challenge the Japanese manufacturers, immediately asks the designers to copy a Honda CB500 Four engine to save time and money.

This industrial policy, combined with little investment in plant and research, with a quality of materials that is not up to the competition, with a lack of distribution and after-sales network, will soon prove to be harmful.

[3] After a failed attempt of rebirth in 1989 supported by the Pesaro industrialist Giancarlo Selci, operating in the field of woodworking machinery and ex machine operator in the Benelli factory, in December 1995 there was the decisive turning point: the young Andrea Merloni, at only 28 years old, scion of family of the famous Marche dynasty of household appliances and passionate motorcyclist, has decided to take over the Benelli brand to relaunch it on the world market, first by opening a new factory in Strada della Fornace Vecchia, where Benelli itself is still based today, then entered the most difficult sectors, using young and dynamic designers, launching a series of scooters and maximoto to give immediate oxygen to the crates and organize the sales network and assistance.

[citation needed] So, in just over a year from the acquisition, were placed on the market the first new products such as models Adiva (in the displacement 125 and 150) equipped with rigid canopy foldable in the trunk (first scooter in the world to be equipped with this mechanism, then copied by the competition), the Velvet (in the displacement 125, 150, 250, 400) which remained in the list until 2012, the 491, very popular among fourteen-year-olds of the time, that mounted a rare horizontal Morini engine of 50 cm3 at 2 times with liquid cooling and that made it one of the most performing of the lot, the K2 (50 and 100 cm3) and the Pepe (of 50 cm3 then became the best-selling Benelli scooter in recent years); the latter, powered by a Minarelli engine, had a good commercial success.

[citation needed] In 1999 was hired the technician Riccardo Rosa (ex Cagiva) and was then presented the new Tornado Tre, a sports bike (900 cm3, then brought to 1130 cm3), with interesting technological innovations.

As per his style, Merloni immediately began to run in 2001 and 2002 in the World Superbike Championship with the Australian rider Peter Goddard, who with his long experience has been able to give directions to improve the bike and consequently also the series.

and two car models BBC (Version "Giardiniera" and Autotelaio with engine) produced by Giuseppe Benelli, finally, on an ideal "pit line", some rare examples of racing motorbikes built in the province of Pesaro and Urbino between the sixties and eighties: MotoBi, MBA, Morbidelli, Piovaticci and Sanvenero.

The Benelli motorcycles without Tonino, which had to interrupt his brilliant career as a driver in 1932 due to a serious accident occurred in the circuit of Tigullio, continued to reap successes and came to win again the European Title FICM in 1934 of the class "175" with the Belgian centaur Yvan Goor; in 1935 the world speed record of category of the Mile and the Km launched with the milanese rider Raffaele Alberti riding the "250" bialbero sport with 182.500 km/h; in 1939 the Tourist Trophy with the English Ted Mellors always with a "250" bialbero sport.

Numerous were the affirmations and the placings in the classic of great bottom of the epoch, the Milan-Taranto and the Motogiro d'Italia, with the Leoncino 125, decidedly the most iconic motorbike of Benelli of the years 50/60.

In the 1972 edition Jarno Saarinen riding the brand new Benelli motorbikes 4 cylinder "500" and "350" wins in both classes beating respectively Giacomo Agostini on MV Agusta and Renzo Pasolini on Aermacchi.