Midway through Cagiva’s management, Ducati addressed the junior rider markets, and developed SuperSports based on the 750SS, cylinders sized for 398cc. The factory saw the folly of shipping them to regions without progressive licensing laws, so they never arrived stateside. Performance didn’t start a grey market-frenzy however, and a 400SS sighting is a singular experience. …
There was a time when the alphanumeric naming of a motor vehicle actually meant something, a time when a BMW 535 was obviously a 5-Series car sporting a 3.5 liter inline six, or when you could tell just from the name that a Ferrari 360 Modena was powered by a 3.6 liter version of their…
Today’s Featured Listing Suzuki RGV250 is part of the rare and weird collection that the seller has been liquidating over the past few weeks. It may not be museum-quality, but it has obviously been well cared-for and would make a great weekend rider, assuming you live somewhere it can be titled. Rare and desirable here in…
Up for auction just after its appearance at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering, this signature Bimota didn’t trophy but is still quite special. Developed to help Bimota out of a near bankruptcy, the SB8R was Suzuki V-twin powered with a gorgeous hybrid chassis. Generally one of the more affordable Bimotas, the SB8R is still a rare…
In the 90s, Ducati captured the imagination of race fans and road riders alike with their exotic, race-winning v-twins, and the Japanese were forced to play catch up on track in in the showrooms, as they’d largely been relying on highly-developed, but less emotional inline fours in World Superbike and endurance racing. The rules of…
Different motorcycle manufacturers have different ways of mining riders’ nostalgia and their own history: Triumph makes motorcycles that look like they rolled straight out of the 1960s but perform like modern machines, while Harley Davidson makes actual 1960s motorcycles, only heavier and with 1980s brakes and electronics. Ducati’s retro bikes manage to straddle the…
Suzuki has a long-standing relationship with the smaller Italian brands, providing their well-engineered powerplants to the likes of Bimota, Cagiva, and Aprilia. It makes sense: big companies may have excess production capacity, and it’s practical for smaller companies to purchase powerful, reliable, thoroughly-developed engines and transmissions and instead focus on frames and styling. In the…
This is it. The end of the line. The last hurrah. The final countdown. The Ducati 900SS FE or “Final Edition.” Well, not really: 1999 saw the introduction of a brand new-ish, fuel-injected, Pierre Terblanche-styled SuperSport that carried over most of this bike’s strengths. But this is the very last of the old-school, carbureted SuperSports…