Engine History

The AMV4 was the vision of Brian Case in early 2008 .  Brian, now the Executive Director of Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, had a vision to create a Made in the USA, Sport Touring motorcycle with a bespoke automotive style V4 engine.  The engine needed to have amazing performance, be visually stunning, compact, light, and sound “rowdy”.  Utilizing foam board, Brian cut, carved, and glued a 3D engine shape that ultimately became the basis for the engine that was used in the 200 or so production motorcycles Motus delivered.  The lineage of the engine design is significant, as the AMV4 was born from the pedigree of many amazingly talented engineers, racers and suppliers. 

Contrary to popular belief, the AMV4 is not an LS cut in half. The design was a clean sheet of paper that started life at Katech Engineering in 2010. The prototype designed and built by Katech was a 90 degree V4 with a balance shaft and direct injection. In this phase of development, the design of the rear face of block migrated from a specific Motus motorcycle application to an adaptable design so that the engine could be used for other applications. The idea of Motus selling this engine as a crate-engine was the impetuous and Hot Rod magazine’s confirmation that this was a great idea was the tipping point.

Following the incredible work of Katech, the engine project migrated to Mast Motorsports. Mast revised the design to what was ultimately released in 2014 as Motus Motorcycles production engine. It was this base engine design configuration that SHP acquired in 2020 for the purpose of iterating the design for other applications as it was originally intended.

Today, SHP is proud to be producing the AMV4 as the “Ligier Storm” for Ligier Automotive for use in their JS F422 for the U.S. Championship Series, an example of which now resides in the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.

Possibly, Brian’s engine vision was destined to live its life in another form from the get-go!