There was an old thread in 24/7 : "Who designed the Spine Frame?" I can't get the search engine to bring it up.   It must have fallen prey to The Pruning.   The story goes Tony Foale had designed a spine frame for the Guzzi which predated the Wittner effort. Wittner showed a good bit of interest in the design and apparently took lots of photos, asked lots of questions. Within a year or so the Wittner spine frame appeared with the help of Detomaso and funding from Maserati of