Mototrans (marque)

Mototrans is the marque under which the Barcelona company MotoTrans sold the motorcycles and mopeds it designed itself, as distinct from the Ducati-branded machines it built under licence from the Italian maker from 1957. The firm was created in 1958 from the association of Maquitrans, a builder and maintainer of trolleybuses, and Cliper, the Spanish importer of Ducati. Alongside the licensed range it produced two-stroke 50 cc mopeds and, in 1967, the MT 250, an ambitious four-cylinder 250 cc Grand Prix racing motorcycle developed with the Italian engineers Auro Savelli and Renato Armaroli, which was abandoned in 1968 when new regulations ruled it out of the world championship. In 1978 a relaunch created the separate MTV marque. The company was placed under judicial administration in 1982 and closed for good in 1984.