Soriano Motorcycles

The machines were created by Ricardo Soriano¹, a Spanish engineer and inventor of note who lived in France, Salamanca, Malaga, Madrid and Switzerland, and who had a long and quite illustrious career in the motor industry. He built Soriano-Pedroso automobiles in France in the early 20th century. He created outboard motors which were copied by the Americans for their landing craft used in the Normandy Invasion - these same outboards were also built during the early 30s in partnership with Manuel Giró, founder of OSSA. OSSA manufactured a prototype motorcycle sidecar combination powered by a modified 4-cylinder Soriano outboard engine and housed in a BMW chassis, and went on to build its production motorcycles in the 1940s using improved versions of the Soriano single-cylinder engine.

Soriano's concept was to built a "people's motorcycle", useful in both towns and urban areas, and was not disimilar to that of the Vespa which appeared some 15 years later.

The first examples appeared before the Spanish Civil War but encountered problems with both ignition and cooling.

Soriano spent the years of the civil war in France, and returned to his home country in 1941 to found R. Soriano S.A. and resume development of his "scooter" (for want of a better name). The first of the machines left the factory in 1942, now possibly named Potro de Acero. The same problems persisted. In 1944 the Soriano Tigre appeared, a much better machine but still with problems. This was followed by the Villiers-engined Puma in 1947, followed by the Lince (Lynx) with a better Tigre engine (probably a Hispano Villiers). Then came the Pantera with telescopic suspension.

A Puma II prototype was built in 1952 but did not enter production.

Soriano partnered with Félix Huarte to build a modified Soriano named the Husor (the name formed from their surnames). Soriano left the motorcycle business in 1954, whilst Huarte went on to create a new motorcycle named the Iruña 202.

In total some Soriano 6000 machines were built.

A small number were sold in France rebadged as G.I.E.M.

Notes
1. Full name: Ricardo Soriano Hermensdorff von Scholtz, Marquis of Ivanrey

Sources: amoticos.org, wikiwand.com/es, Autopasion18.com, Phil Aynsley.

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13-Jan-2019
wood at mayjenant15.plus.com
Soriano Tigre 1944
Hello. Could you please tell me what size wheels and tyres were originally fitted to the 1944 Tigre? Which model had the 8 inch wheels and which had the 10 inch wheels. Your cooperation would be appreciated. Thank you.
Thomas Wood
newark, notts, UK. ng22 9np

The G.I.E.M. was a rebadged first model Soriano and the "frame, engine, forks, guards, 4x10" wheels and tyres are all the same." Phil Aynsely notes that of the 6000 built, the machines had "typically 8 inch wheels", so it seems safe to assume that the first model had 10" wheels and later models 8".

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Fri Apr 04 2008
cnavarro at navarrosicdot com
Soriano Puma
Looking for spares Soriano Puma
Madrid

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Sat Aug 04 2007
patona58 at yahoo.co.uk
soriano

any information on the 1959 soriano madrid motorcycle race ie who won the race how many years did it run for
we have a trophie from above and would be interested to know more regards

alan
birmingham,england

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