1954 Derbi 392 / 4 two-stroke
Images and words by Phil Aynsley
In 2010 I was in Spain and visited the excellent Museu de la Moto at Bassella, a couple of hours drive into the mountains behind Barcelona (they have since opened an annex in central Barcelona). At that time they had this extremely rare (in fact the sole example made) Derbi 392/4 2-stroke on display. It was constructed in 1954 under the technical direction of Jaume Pahissa with the intention of competing in that year’s Barcelona 24 Hour race but unfortunately the design did not prove to be reliable enough and the project was eventually cancelled.
In many ways the overall concept was revisited in 1972 with the BYRA (a semi factory OSSA developed by the Batlló brothers and OSSA engineer Giró), an air-cooled 4 cylinder 1000cc 2-stroke (basically two of their 500cc twin cylinder motors joined together).
