It was 1911 in Pesaro Mrs. Teresa Boni Benelli, who had become a widow four years before, felt the burden to find a good occupation for her six children: Giuseppe Giovanni, Francesco, Filippo, Domenico and Antonio. The youngest, Antonio called by the family Tonino, was still a child. But none of them wanted to work the fields; they were instead fond of mechanics.

It was not sheer chance if the first two, Giuseppe and Giovanni, had already finished the technical secondary school in Fano and had the intention to be employed in a machine shop. Their mother Teresa was a energetic woman, who swiftly took resolutions, and, since her children were not interested in the fields at all, she decided to sell some of them and with the money she made she bought some machinery and she had them placed in a wing of the master building in via Mosca. This is how, almost stealthily, the Benelli Machine Shop was born. The six brothers and some worker got accustomed to the lathes and the millers. The activity mostly consisted in the production of spare parts for the first cars and motorbikes that began to circulate in the roads of Pesaro.

Especially at the beginning, the work was not steady, and it was not unusual that the lathe instead of producing gear pieces shaped the barrels of the hunting shotguns. Notwithstanding this the firm was making profit, and from year to year, with the growth of the motorized transportation, the Benelli Machine Shop specialized more and more in the fine machine parts. But in 1916 an earthquake destroyed most of the house, making the rooms of the machine shop unusable and dangerous. It was a check to the enthusiasm for the young businessmen, who even thought to move the remaining machinery to Milan.

At that moment with the help of their relatives they found a new place in Pesaro and thus the town was able not to lose one of the industries that in the close future would have brought great prestige to it. Every night at the end of the usual work, the six brothers gathered round a table and, leaded by the most expert, Giovanni, they worked hard at the project of the first Benelli engine. Eight years were needed before the dream could become a reality. The 75 c³ two-stroke engine was exposed at the Trade-fair of Milan and it was very appreciated. In 1921, with that same engine taken to 98 C³, the first Benelli motorbike was born. Two years later the twenty-years-old Tonino brilliantly debuted riding the first Benelli for races, a 150 C³, with which he challenged the 175 a at the Grand Prix of the Nations.

During the next years the pair Tonino-Benelli became well known and feared in all the races of that time. His victories are countless: from chronometer races to track races. But the consequences of a terrible accident on the track of the Tigullio obliged him to give up the races when he was already a very young man. The agonistic tradition transferred to a swarm of nephews who in the years to come would have led the Benelli bikes to win the most important national and international prizes. Among them all have to be reminded Dario Ambrosini, who riding a two-shaft 250 won an impressive number of competitions, among them in 1950 the Tourist Trophy and Renzo Pasolini, with his unforgettable duels with the MV Agusta ridden in a masterly way by Giacomo Agostini.

Today Benelli mostly produces scooters, but in 2000 it presented the Tornado 900, maxi-sportive that, thanks to the technology used and the building innovations has made itself known in the whole world market. With this motorbike Benelli has the intention to enter again and as a winner the world of races and especially the Super Bike Championship.