Despite the relentless nudge toward water cooling and impenetrable fuel injection systems, as recently as 2008 Ducati put a capstone on their air-cooled desmodue development. The torquey 1100 is in a naked supermoto package and is widely regarded as some of the most fun to be had on two wheels. 2008 Ducati Hypermotard 1100S for…
Most Bimotas are about obsessive light weight as a path to improved performance, but their radical Tesi goes a step further. The name literally means “thesis” in Italian, and that’s what the series has represented from the start: an experimental alternative to traditional telescopic forks. Three-quarters of the Tesi looks pretty familiar: Bimota’s hybrid trellis/…
With Ducati Paul Smart commemoratives fetching $25K-ish, this owner has created a similarly configured bike with lot of nicer components, distinguishable from the original only by the not-blue frame and the Mediterranean cruise you can take with the price difference. 2006 Ducati Sport 1000 for sale on eBay Designed by Pierre Terblanche in the…
Considering just how rare Bimotas actually are, they’ve had a pretty strong influence on modern sportbikes. Take this Bimota HB3 for example: just 100 were ever made. And yet you can see that fully-faired, race-inspired styling that led to more mass-produced bikes like the GSX-R. In fact, Yamaha was very directly “inspired” by the Bimota’s…
A sportbike powered by a 1064cc two-valve pushrod twin seems positively antediluvian in context and was absolutely outclassed by the competition even when new. But Moto Guzzi managed to take their rugged and very entertaining powertrain and fit it into their 1100 Sport that, while not cutting-edge, offered up charisma, handling, durability, and exclusivity. I’ve…
The 900CR is a bit of a forgotten Ducati. Offered as part of the late 1990’s Ducati range, the 900CR and its sister 900SS weren’t objects of lust like the Ducati 916/996/998 but also weren’t the companies sales leader like the “standard” Monster series. The 900 series was targeted towards non-hard core sport rider, a…
Ducati’s Monster was a wonder of parts-bin engineering and basically saved the company from financial ruin, becoming the company’s best-selling model of all time by a healthy margin and bringing Ducati’s mystique to the masses. The four-valve superbikes may have won the glory but they were highly impractical for daily use, expensive to maintain, and…
Bimota’s successful line of Ducati-powered bikes seems a bit unconventional for the brand, considering they’d always been about creating machines that fused powerful, well-engineered Japanese engines with lightweight, race-bred frames to create bikes that were more than the sum of their parts. But machines like this DB4 seemed to be more about just distilling a…