Ducati is more than just a motorcycle brand to many, bordering on religion—or as its detractors might say: a cult. The CULT OF DESMO! Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer start with the early days of Ducati's singles and move through the inception of the Desmodromic valve train, the first 90-degree V-Twins, and the racing success that followed. Ducati today is built on a constant state of revolution and evolution. The duo discuss the brand that is nearly synonymous with the color red, Italian style, and racing performance. Join us!
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Welcome back to the Cycleworld Podcast. I'm Mark Ware, Editor-in-Chief. I'm with
00:00:04Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor. We're talking today about Ducati. Ducati is
00:00:10nothing sacred. For the longest period of time, Ducati, let's say for the
00:00:18bell curve of enthusiasts who are active in motorcycling now and have been for
00:00:23that bell-curvy mass market, Ducati was a V-twin company. The soul of the company
00:00:30was V-twins and it's sort of all we knew and remembered. But Ducati was a
00:00:37singles company and before that Ducati was a radio, a tiny radio and
00:00:41electronics. And then they made the Cucullo, which was the puppy, which was
00:00:44the click-on engine you put on your bicycle. But it was a four-stroke.
00:00:50Then the V4 came out and of course the V4 came out
00:00:58because that's what was happening in MotoGP. And there was a little bit of,
00:01:02you know, the religious V-twinners were sort of like, well, wait a minute.
00:01:10But in fact, as we discussed recently in setting up this topic for this podcast,
00:01:17nothing is sacred for Ducati. We think Ducati is a technology
00:01:24company. Ducati wants to solve a performance problem and they either have
00:01:30budget or they don't have budget and they use what's available to them to
00:01:34solve the problems of their day. Yes. Necessity. Necessity. And it goes, our
00:01:44launching point is in the 1950s with some punk engineer who came out of
00:01:50Mondial and decided he should throw away valve springs, which was not a
00:01:58religious decision. It was a practical one. How come this thing is in two pieces?
00:02:06So the 125 class in Italy and in 1950s GP racing was an intensely contested one
00:02:21that went on up to, I think they began to make over 20 horsepower at a point in
00:02:30the later 50s at 13,000 RPM. And the crankshaft had to be replaced for every
00:02:37race and there were frequent valve spring failures. And so, and we know that
00:02:45Mercedes-Benz responded to the valve spring breakage problem with their M196
00:02:52straight eight Grand Prix car engine with Desmodromic valves. It was called
00:03:00Z drive, which sounds as though it's going to get us to Alpha Centauri in
00:03:07about 15 minutes. And so Desmo was a hot idea at that time and Taglioni designed
00:03:18his own. And he was a hardworking person with wonderful mechanical intuition, and
00:03:30they made a success out of it. And won races, 125 races in 1958, which was the
00:03:40year after most of the Italian teams had withdrawn from the GPs, Gilera, Mondial,
00:03:48and Guzzi. So that was a curiosity until they decided to put it on some of their
00:03:59singles. Now, I think, now that's one revolution that Ducati encompassed, which
00:04:09was the switch from valve springs to something that might be better. And there
00:04:20have been since then numerous revolutions in which Ducati have responded to
00:04:26intractable problems by taking a new design approach. And one of those steps was
00:04:37made necessary when it was decided Ducati should build bigger motorcycles. The market
00:04:45was not just for little tiddlers. It was now becoming more of a leisure market. And
00:04:53the leisure rider doesn't want a 125 or a 175 because he wants to bring a passenger.
00:04:59So some efforts were made. They made the 350 Desmo single, which was successful as a
00:05:09road race engine. They enlarged it to a 450, and it vibrated terribly. People couldn't
00:05:21ride it. The handlebars turned their hands into incomprehensible pieces of otherness.
00:05:28What are these things on the end of my arm? I can't feel them.
00:05:31Surely, just walk on the stand and idle.
00:05:34Yes. And well, all right, we'll do a parallel twin. Those have been very successful. We'll
00:05:41build one. And the British ones vibrate, but ours won't. But it did because the physics
00:05:48respects no nationality. Those bikes vibrated on the stand idling and weren't where you
00:05:56left them when you came back five minutes later. So this meant lack of vibration was
00:06:04standing in the way of Ducati's progress towards a part of the big motorcycle market.
00:06:11And Taglioni decided to combine two single cylinder top ends, their cylinder axes at
00:06:20right angles, as had been known for many years, to provide primary balance. And a prototype
00:06:32was whipped together very quickly. And in an epic-making one-day occurrence, the late
00:06:45Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari finished one-two in the Imola 200, what was it, April 27th,
00:06:531972. And wham, it put Ducati on the map. Nobody could ignore this because all the expected
00:07:02heavies were defeated, including Giacomo Agostini, who had led the race on a shaft drive MV,
00:07:10which was never seen again. So that was the origin of Ducati as a V-twin company.
00:07:21Up to that time, they'd been a single cylinder company. So this business of deciding, and this
00:07:32is the clients, the enthusiasts, the Ducatisti, who are projecting this idea onto the manufacturer
00:07:45without the manufacturer's knowledge or consent. Oh, Ducati, our V-twin company.
00:07:52Well, Ducati proceeded to rationalize that motorcycle. The original design had a bevel-driven
00:08:05overhead camshaft. And the bevel drive was one of Taglioni's innovations. It wasn't brand new,
00:08:14but it was new to Ducati. And it became a feature of all their singles.
00:08:21And that bevel drive was difficult to manufacture and difficult to set up in production. So
00:08:28in 1979 came the Panta, which had cog belt drive to the cams,
00:08:34so that it became like other motorcycles, line up the marks and it's timed.
00:08:39It starts and runs. Now, there was a certain segment of the Ducatisti who wanted the motorcycle
00:08:52to represent European flair. And when they talked about character in respect of British motorcycles,
00:09:02they meant it stops often for no reason and leaves a puddle of oil.
00:09:08Or you've really got to know the religion to set the shims up. It's not straightforward, right?
00:09:17Yeah. It's how you're in the secret group, the tribal knowledge.
00:09:22With a special handshake. So the engines continued to develop from that point. And
00:09:32Dr. Taglioni was, by the time of the first big V-twin, revered and respected.
00:09:44So at some point along comes, well, that point is 1978, along comes an engineering student
00:09:53named Massimo Bordi. And Ducati had some arrangement with Cosworth whereby they could
00:10:00send acolytes to sit at the knee of the great company, which had made the DFV Formula One
00:10:11engine, the most winning engine in Formula One at any time. And Bordi was already
00:10:21obsessed, you could say, with the idea of combining a desmodromic valve operation
00:10:27with what had been learned at Cosworth about four valve cylinder heads with narrow valve angles and
00:10:37open unobstructed combustion chambers without pistons poking up into them and obstructing
00:10:45the motion of the charge, which is essential for fast combustion.
00:10:49Now, when Harley-Davidson built their prototype XR, the Iron XR, for 1970,
00:10:57it had a poking up in their piston dome and it required ignition at 50 degrees before top dead
00:11:05center. Now, for people who are in the Norton way of motorcycling, know that under 35 degrees is
00:11:15readily possible. So, what is this 50 degrees? Massimo Bordi wanted to know the answer. And
00:11:24he and Gianluigi Mengele conspired to design the 851. And when it was committed to racing
00:11:37at Montjuic Park in the 14th hour, that's the, what, Barcelona 24 hour, it broke a rod.
00:11:49And then in its next outing at Hareth, it popped a head gasket. At this point,
00:11:55Taglioni declared, this motorcycle may not be worked on in my shop.
00:12:02I do not like this motorcycle. Take it away. Bordi did just that. He took all his papers home
00:12:11and worked from home. And at a point when the prototype had been to some degree perfected,
00:12:20the company sent Taglioni away on a sales trip so that the 851 could be brought into the shop
00:12:29and tested. It made over a hundred horsepower, the first time any Ducati had done so.
00:12:37So, management knew that. On the other hand, they had great respect for Taglioni.
00:12:44Taglioni said, basically, four valves is a stupid idea because there's no way to obtain
00:12:53satisfactory combustion turbulence. So, the testing, the test group with the 851 came back
00:13:03from the track one evening to find themselves locked out of the shop with the Taglioni group
00:13:13embattled within. And of course, people used their keys and fistfights resulted.
00:13:23So, that it became not only a contest of ideas, but a contest of politics.
00:13:35Whom do you support? In whose party are you? Well, imagine the support that Taglioni would
00:13:41have had, right? I mean, of course. Yeah. I mean, he said in an interview that we ran in 1998,
00:13:51of all the motorcycles you have designed, what are your favorites? My favorite motorcycle of
00:13:55all designs was 750 CCV twin of 71 to 74, particularly the Desmo. Also, the 125 triple
00:14:02cam chap Desmo, single Grand Prix racer from 56 to 58. They both fulfill the same criteria and
00:14:10best exemplify the elements of a successful motorcycle that we have discussed. They were
00:14:16the best and most complete realization of my ideals, both technically and aesthetically.
00:14:22The 750 Desmo was fast, stable, had nice lines and a very smooth and economical,
00:14:28and was very smooth and economical, a well-balanced motorcycle. The narrow engine
00:14:32meant it could be mounted low in the frame for low center of gravity. No vibration meant the
00:14:37rider was more closely involved with the machine. Here's a real Taglioni line,
00:14:44I was also permitted to design the 750 with attractive engine cases.
00:14:49There were no economic restraints placed on me when I designed it.
00:14:54Well, that's quite a cantata. And it's gracefully written. I certainly would say.
00:15:04On the other hand, many of us... Yes.
00:15:10The point here is, imagine the bike saved the company. He says that later.
00:15:16Absolutely. No question.
00:15:18It saved the company and it made Ducati... It put Ducati on the world stage. It gave them
00:15:24the reputation of being a high performance, large displacement motorcycle company that
00:15:29they enjoy today. And so imagine the passion behind supporting Dr. T like, no, he's the one.
00:15:38We got to, you know, you got the new guy coming in.
00:15:42He's led us out of the desert. Yeah.
00:15:45Well, then of course, the things that we're more familiar with are that the late Phil Schilling
00:15:51and Cook Nelson built a Ducati based Superbike for AMA racing and won the Daytona 200 in 1977.
00:16:01And the importer who had provided no support for any of this was told,
00:16:10if you wish to use news of our accomplishment with this motorcycle, you will have to meet
00:16:18certain conditions. So there was some heat, some friction there. But the big result was
00:16:26that Americans, with their tremendous appetite for motorcycles of all kinds,
00:16:32realized in a huge explosion that Ducati was something. And that, in addition to the
00:16:411972 Imola 200, was a great event for Ducati. And of course, Phil Schilling subscribed quite
00:16:53heavily to the Taglioni legend and contributed to it from his writing.
00:17:00Meanwhile, the 851 was undoubtedly the future, because it was liquid-cooled. It made over 100
00:17:12horsepower in that highly important test. And when it was brought to the United States and run the
00:17:20first time, I thought to myself, man, if they could just gather up that noise and push it back
00:17:28up the tailpipe and make it push on the pistons, they'd have a hell of a motorcycle.
00:17:36And of course, I think AMA had extended certain courtesies to them so that it could be
00:17:43operated. But they did just that. They quieted it down and made a wonderful series of racing
00:17:50motorcycles that won one after another World Superbike Championship and became some of the most
00:18:00desired motorcycles ever. And the wonderful thing about the series of motorcycles,
00:18:08that V-twin motorcycles, that Ducati used to win World Superbike is that they were continually
00:18:15evolving. Bore and stroke were changing. Features of design were being completely rethought.
00:18:24New ideas were being added, such as computational fluid dynamics being
00:18:29applied to the intake process and to combustion itself. So that
00:18:36the thing came from a beginning around 120 horsepower
00:18:43and left the stage making really close to 200. And in the process, they encountered case cracking,
00:18:54steeply rising friction inside the cylinder head beyond 12,000 RPM. There's a wonderful
00:19:03paper on how that problem was solved. But at every step of the way, it was like
00:19:14the development of combat aircraft during the war. That is, they knew what conditions
00:19:21had to be ameliorated or overcome, and they ameliorated or overcame them.
00:19:27They crashed their way forward. And an important point to be made here is that when
00:19:37the Japanese brands, I will mention no names, first encountered the ideas of Keith Duckworth,
00:19:46the Cosworth flat combustion chamber and four valve tumblehead. They made engines that looked
00:19:56like the Cosworth, but when they attempted to shorten the stroke and enlarge the bore,
00:20:02they ran into problems that took them two years to solve. Years.
00:20:09And when I asked Claudio Domenicali about this, he said, of course, I can say nothing about
00:20:18what problems the Japanese may have encountered. But in our own case, we know that
00:20:27excellent combustion is subject to two basic variables, the intake downdraft angle
00:20:36and the diameter of the intake runners. The downdraft angle determines
00:20:45how much emphasis goes on into cylinder filling versus how much emphasis goes into creating
00:20:53tumble, which is the motion that stores intake energy so it can become the turbulence that
00:21:01makes for fast combustion. And Ducati were able at each step when they changed the bore,
00:21:09they changed the design of the head, they changed the crankcase, they were always able to get back
00:21:16to good combustion quickly and efficiently. Now, as attractive as being a V-twin stalwart may be,
00:21:31I find it very admirable that their engineering team was able to continuously surf on these
00:21:42problems and move forward. They maintain the competitiveness of their motorcycle. It's true
00:21:52that the Hondas, Colin Edwards won a couple of championships, Superbike championships on Hondas,
00:22:03that's World Superbike. Russell took a championship and Kaczynski in 1997. But
00:22:14when the riders said, this motorcycle has wonderful top end, but it's weak in acceleration,
00:22:21and they kept saying it, Ducati began to change their camshaft. They shortened
00:22:28the intake timing, the valve open time, and they increased the lift. And finally,
00:22:34Carl Fogarty was saying, okay, okay, that's enough. There's too much mid-range now.
00:22:42So, they were able to respond not only to the physical things like crankcase cracking or
00:22:53ignition faults or cam sensors that soaked up oil and stopped sensing,
00:23:02they could also respond to the desires and the needs of riders. So,
00:23:11this is strong stuff. And it's also documented.
00:23:15Yeah. And it goes, it returns to the notion about having a combustion department. That's
00:23:19really what your theory was, is that they have a department dedicated to how combustion works.
00:23:26I was shown, yeah.
00:23:28Well, when we talked to Stefano Fontoni, who was in charge of the 698 Superquadro Mono,
00:23:34with its great big, what's the bore on that one? 116-ish, I don't know, it's giant.
00:23:39116, yeah.
00:23:40116, huge bore, probably never to be seen again in a production motorcycle in five,
00:23:47who knows, but about as big as it gets. And when we were talking about that motorcycle,
00:23:53he said, well, Ducati has different ideas about airflow. And it's got to go back to what you're
00:23:59talking about, about, well, these are the variables we control. And then just that mass
00:24:03experimentation in B-twins, just two big singles, it's a beautiful expression of
00:24:11engineering know-how and knowledge that's been applied.
00:24:15To turn that into a reliable product that can be sold.
00:24:20And of course, people used to moan greatly about the service interval for valve clearance.
00:24:27They've responded on that and they've improved it.
00:24:31Oh, it's more, in many models, it's significantly longer than their competition. The Adventure
00:24:38bike is ridiculously long now to go between valve clearance checks. Maybe when you convert
00:24:49in religion, you have to be more whatever than the people who were born into it. Or who was it?
00:24:56I think early Hondas or early Toyotas, they had terrible rust problems when they first came to
00:25:01the United States because they'd never-
00:25:02Hondas did.
00:25:03Hondas, yeah. They never really encountered-
00:25:04Windshields falling in your lap.
00:25:06Yeah, they never encountered Michigan so much when salt and all the things-
00:25:11All salt.
00:25:13And their response was to go incredibly far and to fix that more than fixed. And that's sort of what,
00:25:22I mean, Ducati, I have a 900SS, a 1995 900SS, and it's a two valve. And you think,
00:25:29oh, it's just the two valve. But the instructions for valve clearance adjustments on a 95 is like,
00:25:35take everything off the bike and remove the rear shock. Because the shock is just like right on top
00:25:42of the clearance, the cover.
00:25:45The cover, yeah.
00:25:46But they've just responded to that and fixed it. There's no issue. So it's amazing. And it's
00:25:54valve seats. I remember 900SS, or excuse me, the Supersport 1000 of the redesign, 1998,
00:26:04they were talking about the valve seat material that they had changed from the previous models
00:26:08to a beryllium bronze and something that was highly resistant to wear and extended the intervals
00:26:16starting then.
00:26:18Yeah. Well, I'm not disturbed by the fact that there was a clash between Dr. Taglioni and
00:26:31Morty. Any more than I am disturbed when I hear that there is a generational conflict in a family.
00:26:41The young people growing up are being exposed to evolving parts of the culture that their
00:26:48parents are not. And so the day may come when their parents say, you're not going out of this
00:26:56house wearing that, or with that haircut, or with that thing in your nose. What are you, a pig?
00:27:06And this is normal because Dr. Taglioni had done very well with not only his initial education,
00:27:17which had to be completed after the war interrupted it, but also with his tremendous
00:27:23life of self-education. It had a viewpoint. When Morty came along, this was another viewpoint.
00:27:33Times had changed. 1978 was years after the introduction of the Cosworth V8 in 1967.
00:27:46So Morty was looking at these new developments with an eye to how this could help Ducati's
00:27:55product. And Taglioni had his hands full with doing things his way and supervising his department
00:28:04that had evolved under his guidance. And this is normal.
00:28:10So when I asked Gianluigi Mengele, oh, where is Morty today? He said, not here.
00:28:21And I said, is there a reason? He said only one opinion was possible, his. So, and on another
00:28:31occasion, Preziosi said, sometimes there are disagreements. There may be raised voices,
00:28:47screaming even. After all, we are Italians. But when a decision is made, there is no dissent
00:28:56again. Our minds are made up. So I think that consensus may not come from conflict,
00:29:09but there will be a result. And it's not wrong for there to be argumentation, even screaming
00:29:18or possibly fistfights. Yeah. Gigi Mengele, we've said this before, I've said it before,
00:29:27deserves so much credit for the engineering success of Ducati because he was a force.
00:29:35He was involved with everyone along the line, up to Bordi, and he was still at the company
00:29:44until not that long ago. And talking to Bruno Di Prato, he credits Mengele with making the
00:29:54Desmo Quattro mechanism, the elegant and efficient solution that it is.
00:30:00Yeah. It was really Mengele's work in the trenches getting that to go. So shout out to Gigi Mengele.
00:30:09When I asked Mengele about Taglioni's selection of the 90 degree V angle, he said,
00:30:18this is not creative work. He said, this is history. 90 degree V twins have existed since
00:30:25the first war, and people have known about this. But of course, it was the key to being able to
00:30:34operate a twin at high RPM. And this is how V twins became competitive with inline force,
00:30:42with some help from the example of John Britton, who not single-handedly, but definitely without
00:30:51a factory behind him, got some results that encouraged the V twin crowd to think that
00:30:57there was something there. And there was. So this is, to my mind, a very attractive,
00:31:09creative story. For example, when it comes to generating the turbulence required for rapid
00:31:17combustion, I was shown a test rig. Inside the cylinder head was an anemometer, just like the
00:31:25one described by Harry Ricardo in his classic book, The High-Speed Internal Combustion Engine.
00:31:33And Harry described turbulence in terms of the ratio between mixture RPM whirling around in the
00:31:42cylinder and crankshaft RPM. This is the zone we found works best. Well, seek accurately and
00:31:52inventively, and you shall find. And they did. They found. And when it was time to replace
00:32:02Ricardo's in-cylinder anemometer with something more sophisticated, Ducati plunged right in.
00:32:10I was led through a zone in the factory where there was a door that said Calcoli.
00:32:20It was the math room where they work on models to represent what's going on
00:32:29with the whole vehicle, with elements of design such as vibrations of the crankshaft,
00:32:35all those things. Simulation is now a big thing at Ducati, mathematical simulation. And so
00:32:45it's necessary to set aside, I won't say give up, but to set aside the notion of the
00:32:55venerable craftsman in a leather apron with a swing-out micrometer pocket. You wouldn't want
00:33:01your micrometer falling on the hard floor if you bent over. Wearing octagonal metal-framed
00:33:08spectacles and willing to take 30 minutes from his work to fix a broken toy for a small child.
00:33:19This is maybe nursery school, but it could be living in a lot of people's heads.
00:33:27Obviously, it's living in mine. But that has been replaced by mathematical simulation.
00:33:35And today, there are people who very much dislike the idea of electronic rider aids.
00:33:46But I would suggest we should consider this from a different viewpoint. In 1950,
00:33:53Jeff Duke failed to win the 500 championship on his Max Norton because his tires came apart
00:34:01again and again. He did win the championship the next year on a different brand of tires.
00:34:07But that style of tire with a cotton carcass and a natural rubber tread was giving up at
00:34:1750 horsepower. Maybe it was giving up at more like 40 horsepower. But at each step along the way,
00:34:26tire design has tried to keep up with the horsepower to be transmitted through that
00:34:36single drive wheel. Now we're at a point, and Ducati is the leader in this process right now,
00:34:45at which 300 horsepower are to be transmitted through that single tire.
00:34:52Do we think that the rider should be given no assistance in trying to accomplish that?
00:35:02In the last GP, Francesco Begnaia said, I found that I could not keep the pace
00:35:14riding steadily in my best way. I had to rest the tire every other lap.
00:35:22So what does that mean? It means that we've now come to a new step in the process that I described
00:35:29beginning with Jeff Duke feeling his bike begin to vibrate horribly and knowing that pieces were
00:35:37coming off of his tires. That has now been brought from the 40 horsepower level to the
00:35:42300 horsepower level. And it would seem that a new revolution is now required.
00:35:49And I'm sure Ducati are working on it. Very hard. No doubt.
00:35:59The evolution of the V-twin Desmo Quattro was pretty remarkable. When I first got in the
00:36:06business, we were looking at about 103 rear wheel horsepower from a 914 996.
00:36:16The most beautiful bike in the world, as many called it when the 916 came out.
00:36:22It just does look right. Yeah. And it was a leap forward. And
00:36:27that entire process of kind of the low production,
00:36:32they just, they would upgrade the engine and then they would upgrade the engine through the life.
00:36:37And then they would do the special models with the carbon fiber and all that. And then the next
00:36:43engine was kind of like usually snuck into the model as like the last special bike before the
00:36:50next generation would come out. And they kind of get the seeds going like, yeah, yeah, it works
00:36:54pretty good. We can put it in as the new engine. And it, you know, it just kind of leapt along.
00:37:00And, you know, there was the turbulence era with the triple nine and then the triple nine are,
00:37:04had the, you know, the test of strata super, whatever it was, you know, the last one,
00:37:10it's actually a bargain folks, you know, obviously the design didn't resonate. Turbulence is,
00:37:20he had an interesting bent on styling and also was trying to be a practical engineer and said,
00:37:26no, no, the double-sided swing arm works. We're going to, we're going to, we have to go with that
00:37:30on, on my nine, nine, nine. And then all the other, you know, Hey, we're going to evoke art
00:37:35deco trains and all that. And from a design perspective, yeah, they're, they're, they're
00:37:40still interesting, but it didn't resonate with the, or let's say it didn't incite the basic
00:37:47love that the Ducati person was looking for. And so they had the 1098 in 2007,
00:37:52and a lot of things happened with that one. I think it was a, it was a conservative design,
00:37:57but it was a necessary design and it was a really good design. And it's, you know,
00:38:02like someone in marketing talked to engineering and said, no, single-sided swing arm. Yeah. But
00:38:07technically we get a half a second, a lap for, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just make it work.
00:38:12And, uh, and it was, it was really neat. There were a lot of technical changes,
00:38:18and one of the things that happened right then is that Ducati said their leader bike had to compete
00:38:25directly with thousand CC, uh, sport bikes from Japan. And so there was suddenly, uh,
00:38:32an adherence to the quarter mile and they changed the gear. And I talked to, um,
00:38:35Andrea Forney years ago, and I asked him about like, man, we were on a sport touring bike or
00:38:41a monster. And I said, well, you know, it's a, it's a sport touring bike. And he was like,
00:38:45sport touring bike or a monster. And I said, man, the gearing, you know,
00:38:49it's just so tall at the end there. And he's like, oh, we gear everything for top speed.
00:38:53So every bike in testing was geared for top speed. And when the 10 98 came along,
00:38:59they geared it to do a time in the quarter mile. Yeah. Well, that was something that, uh,
00:39:07Claudio Domenicali said at one point, I believe that we should give up the idea of making the
00:39:15world's fastest, best performing V twin and cross off V twin and right motorcycle ambition.
00:39:26And on the wall of his office, he pointed to a photograph framed photograph of a Porsche 911.
00:39:35And he said, this is our ambition to produce the affordable exotic.
00:39:44Now exotic is why Ducati were paired with Harley Davidson years ago as the two companies
00:39:54that understood that people buy motorcycles because of the force of their own emotions
00:40:03and not because they read a spec sheet. Oh, well, our air force needs this aircraft because it has
00:40:1127 miles more range while carrying this ordinance load. Oh, and on page 2,954,
00:40:21none of that. They are great supporting elements. It's the secondary that's tertiary.
00:40:28It's the 13th theory support for the initial thing, which is, I love this. Yes. It has to
00:40:35speak to people in non-verbal ways that are highly effective. And one of the, one of the
00:40:44ways is just to make it red or yellow stand out colors. So, uh, the other manufacturers were
00:40:55content to market their motorcycles as commodities. Well, our 600 is better than their 600 because
00:41:02it has, you name it, um, bold new graphics BNG. Well, I mean, 600 it's true. It was, that was a,
00:41:13there was a very strong technical, that's what 600s were selling on. That's what thousands were
00:41:18selling on. We, you know, top speed testing, 600s one year we went out and we had a 600 cc
00:41:25super sport bike do 167 miles per hour factory. Good big eyes. Wow. I mean, remarkable. And,
00:41:35and the experience is, is great on those bikes. They're amazing. Ducati did,
00:41:42you know, as you said, crossing off a V twin and putting motorcycle in there, crossing off
00:41:47Ducati, we're getting, we're doing the performance. We are, we are, we are going to deliver the
00:41:52performance. We have the narrative and the narrative was really strong because it was always,
00:41:58I mean, the nine 16 didn't win a ton of shootouts. It was fun to go fast on. The torque was really
00:42:04good and you could go very fast on it, but it was always, oh, it's a Ducati. There were always things
00:42:09you know, the, the dry clutch was not, I mean, all credit to Don Kanae for quarter mile testing
00:42:14Ducatis at that time and not smoking the clutch, getting a good quarter mile time, a consistent
00:42:21quarter mile time without screeching the clutch and having all the things that bad things that
00:42:25would happen from that. Those clutches were said, yeah, they were, they were quirks. There were
00:42:30quirks. And then, you know, kind of in Oh seven, we're just going to compete. And, you know,
00:42:37we're just going to compete. And that's what they did. And another thing that Domenicoli said,
00:42:46that he told his engineers that from that day forth, he expected that when new parts were
00:42:55designed, that they would be designed with all do analytical effort to make them as light and
00:43:04durable as possible. There wasn't going to be any more of that. Well, this, the shape is easy
00:43:12to forge and it makes an adequate closing lever for the Desmo two valves. And I think that's,
00:43:21that's quite a commitment. But the thing is that for the sporting motorcyclist,
00:43:29a heavy motorcycle is an enemy. And to make the whole thing acceptably light is an accomplishment.
00:43:40I was stunned when I saw that the Desmo Quattro, the V4 was 143 pounds with the induction system.
00:43:51It's a big thing sitting there on its, on its designer stand, but it's lightweight.
00:44:02That's what a TZ 750 engine weighed. And it had the highest thing above its cylinder head was an
00:44:11inch. Whereas those other things have, have all that valve mechanism.
00:44:19Oh, a Desmo Quattro cylinder head. It's just, it's so packed. It's so packed. There's a fella
00:44:28who this will be a shout out to Ed Millich with duckpower.com. And he said, he says,
00:44:34shimming and setting up the older four valves is he's like, I just want to take it out of the
00:44:39bike completely. Do it with a head off the bike probably. Um, no, I, when you talked about weight,
00:44:47I had dinner with Peter Egan, Mert Lowell and Malcolm Smith one year at the, uh,
00:44:53Quail Motorcycle Gathering. And we were talking about motorcycles and what we like about them
00:44:57and what are the best qualities. And it was a great conversation. And Malcolm Smith said,
00:45:02weight is the enemy that simple. Yeah. And he's, of course, of course, Malcolm's right.
00:45:10Yeah. And I know that there are people who feel, uh, comforted by the weight of a touring bike,
00:45:19that it seems to be part of the stability and the unstoppable, uh, get there later today,
00:45:30touring mentality. And well, it, it, it can be heavy, but it can be light for the,
00:45:36for the type. You can't make it certainly, you know, you can't make a 400 pound, you know,
00:45:42Harley Davidson full dresser or an Indian full dresser. There's just no, there's just too much
00:45:46stuff. And you want to, you want the quality of the engine, you know, you want a 40 pound
00:45:51crankshaft because you want to be able to let the clutch out at a thousand and have that move off
00:45:57and have that thing just glide away. But you can have the weight. You can bring the
00:46:01weight conversation into the room because if you make the wheels lighter on that bike,
00:46:06you're going to make the dynamics better. You're going to make the breaking better.
00:46:09Everything will be better. And a lot of times when you make a lightweight part,
00:46:15you're saving material, you're saving shipping, you're saving,
00:46:19you're saving. It's a cascade. You can have a better part. That's, that's lighter weight,
00:46:25uses less material and is stronger. And it benefits the motorcycle. Yes. And, um,
00:46:31we could also mention, uh, the idea of steering delay, because it's possible to make two motorcycles
00:46:37that have the same specification, the same steering geometry, and one of them steers right now.
00:46:44It feels taut and immediate. And the other one feels a bit lazy. And when you put a,
00:46:52a big bar through the steering head, it moves on this, on the sluggish steerer and on the other
00:47:00bike, it's quite stiff. So what we're eliminating there and which is creating a feeling of lightness
00:47:07because the response is quicker is that when you turn the bars, first, the tire has to deform,
00:47:19it loads up, and then it transmits force to the rim, which transmits force all the way
00:47:25up to the steering head. And everything is flexing a little bit. The more it flexes,
00:47:31the slower the steering is going to be. So yes, these are, I think that they did a wonderful
00:47:39thing with large touring bikes by stiffening up their chassis, giving the rider that
00:47:46more immediate control is a plus, which fits in with the idea of, of reduced weight.
00:47:53Yeah. And it's a natural, it's a natural thing to happen at Ducati. Yeah. We, we, we build light
00:48:00bikes. That's what they do. You know, there's, we're not using giant chunks of cast iron for
00:48:05lower triple clamps. They showed me the chassis durability testing machine, which, which is
00:48:14like a, a drum that supports the rear wheel with a terrible bump built onto it. And it just goes
00:48:23kabang, kabang! Yeah, no, both, both wheels. And it's like, they bolt a four by four to this
00:48:29cylindrical drum and then it's like kablam, yeah, yeah, sure. It's going over an infinity of curbs.
00:48:35Yep. Yep. Indians got them. Everybody's got them. Just going to beat that stuff, mercilessly
00:48:41vibrate it, smash it. A development person at Triumph in the early days when Triumph had come
00:48:47back in the nineties. You know, they were developing, developing bikes and doing a pretty
00:48:54good job, but learning. And one of the guys said, you know, we, we produced the motorcycles and we
00:49:01got them out in the market and we couldn't believe what people could break. Yes. Yeah.
00:49:09Everybody overloads, everybody, you know, exceeds the GBWR, all those things. What I want to move on to is
00:49:18it's not the death of the V-Twin, but it is the beginning of what was next at Ducati
00:49:25and how the V-Twin is still a wonderful part of their product line, but the pointy end is a V4.
00:49:37Yep. And you know, there were the V-Twin religious adherents, but I think everybody's on board
00:49:45with the V4 as the pointy end. And that would start with, yeah, they have, uh, with the 70 degree
00:49:52offset of the crank pins, uh, they have taken, they have made the sound of the V4
00:50:02not so different from that of a V-Twin. And that was intentional. Um, so Ducati are well aware that
00:50:14of this tremendous residual love for the, for the V-Twin and, uh, they've honored it.
00:50:25But for example, when, uh, Claudio Domenicalli said, we looked into the possibility of making
00:50:37a V-Twin to compete in MotoGP, we found that the large bore that would be required for this
00:50:47took us into a realm of combustion that we had not yet explored. This was not a good bet for
00:50:55success at an early date. And they also, uh, elsewhere, he had been asked similar questions
00:51:03and had said, we felt that the V-Twin would have to operate at 17,000 RPM,
00:51:10and that would call for a stroke and a combustion chamber shape that were contrary to good sense.
00:51:18So if everyone's happy to stay with the V-Twin as it was and to enjoy what is fast becoming a
00:51:29vintage ride, that's valid. That's perfectly valid because engineering exists to serve
00:51:38human's desires and that's one class of desire. So Ducati still manufacture V-Twins. On the other
00:51:47hand, for the condition of very high power, uh, it is, it became sensible to switch to a V4 and
00:51:54that was done. And we, we, we can't stand in the way of physics. Yeah. The twins remain a great
00:52:07solution. I look back to the 900 SS that I have in 1995, you know, coexisting with Desmo Quattros
00:52:14that were liquid cooled and the 900 SS for a street rider. I mean, you know, Peter Egan's,
00:52:19uh, in the tribe, he's had multiple 900 SS's. He's shopping for one now based on,
00:52:26yeah, let him ride mine down here. And he's the most professional and, um, he's a recidivist.
00:52:32You know, he goes back to bikes, if not the exact bike he owned before, one very much like it.
00:52:38It's like rereading, rereading a book in light of the knowledge you have gained since you first
00:52:45read it. The second reading will produce fresh insights. He went on the press launch with our,
00:52:52um, former full-time, uh, other technical editor, Steve Anderson. Steve was working at Cycle and
00:52:59Peter Egan was working at Cycle World. And they went on the original press launch from the 900 SS
00:53:04and their first ride was within the factory walls. They went back to where the bikes were parked
00:53:09and they fired them up and they're like, huh? And they rode to the front gate and Peter pulled up
00:53:15next, next to Steve and turned his head and said, I'm going to have to own one of these.
00:53:19And Steve said, yeah, me too. Like after hundreds of feet, they do have magical qualities. And the
00:53:26821s and the engine in the monster, uh, you know, the SP is they're just, they're beautiful and
00:53:33they're great street bikes, but we're not trying to make 300 horsepower. And, um, and there goes
00:53:39Ducati solving the technical problem of how do I get the most performance and the way we went
00:53:48and the V force came out and you know, it's obvious what's going on in MotoGP with them,
00:53:53that they have really done the job and the street versions of the V4 are like a different,
00:54:03they're like a different class of motorcycle. I mean, not so much on the multi-strata,
00:54:07the multi-strata is a different kind of street bike. It's a different kind of adventure bike
00:54:12because it has this kind of MotoGP ish backbeat, but it's got the shorter timing. It's got a spring,
00:54:19you know, spring valve head and stuff solving a technical problem or not a technical problem.
00:54:23Just like, Hey, let's, you know, this is fine with spring heads, spring valves. Cause we're not,
00:54:29you know, we're not trying to win any, the adventure bike world championship. We're trying
00:54:33to make a reliable bike that you'd be happy to ride across Morocco, you know? And so let's make
00:54:38some decisions to support that. A really fun bike, pretty easy to control throttle wise,
00:54:45but you get on a street fighter or you get on, you know, any of the V4 sport bikes and it's,
00:54:53it's like a different, it's a different product, the intensity of speed and acceleration.
00:55:00It's just a new level. It really is. I mean, the Japanese aren't putting as much technical
00:55:06development into their leader bikes as is Ducati. And they're not doing low production,
00:55:12super exotic. Cause you earlier said, Oh, we're going to make the affordable exotic. Well,
00:55:15they Ducati's also really good at making the unaffordable exotic and they do it. And it's
00:55:20beautiful. You know, you get the superleggeras and all this stuff where they just throw the
00:55:24book at it and it's all the titanium and carbon fiber for the customer who wants to spend more.
00:55:31Yeah. Let him or her. Well, you have that, you know, it's trick. It's beautiful. It's exotic.
00:55:38It's, and it adds that extra layer and, you know, some level of exclusivity. I mean, my,
00:55:45my Ducati 900 SS has a full fairing, but it's just all the, the Ducati people would say it's
00:55:52just a CR and the CR was the half aired bike and a CR had the not full floating upgraded brakes.
00:55:59It didn't have the, you know, the torque rod on the rear brake. It didn't have the nice
00:56:04master cylinder with the remote reservoirs, et cetera. But I tell you what, riding around on
00:56:10the street, I don't miss it. Like, sure. Would I like an SP? Why not? But you know, it's just,
00:56:15it's the Ducati recipe. You gotta, you gotta make the affordable one, which is what I got.
00:56:21And then you can make the really special ones, super lights and all that.
00:56:26Yeah. So the more I, I read in trying to prepare myself for, for our conversation here,
00:56:38the more it has seemed to me that Ducati's evolution over the decades is one of
00:56:48near permanent revolution because they are in racing to stay. And in racing, you are always
00:57:00being held back by something. That's what the, the rider and team conferences are. You see the rider
00:57:08sitting there looking puzzled in the chair with a sheet in front of him that has the,
00:57:13all the corners numbered. And the, the last supper of technicians are in a semi-circle around him.
00:57:23And he is reciting, all right, what about turn eight? What's, what's in our way here?
00:57:31And there's lots to say. And out of a year of this work, a year of encounter with problems
00:57:41come solutions. And it's not long after a given racing design has retired from the sport,
00:57:52then the production bike is equally fast because production is coming along
00:58:01right in its wake. It's drafting. And I think that this, this process of permanent revolution
00:58:10is simply a way of doing business at Ducati rather than saying, okay,
00:58:19that'll hold those guys for six, seven, eight years. Now, what about the 50cc scooter?
00:58:28We make any progress there? It just seems like a, a way to keep everyone excited
00:58:36about what they're doing rather than as one, uh, elderly aero engineer said,
00:58:45spending your career designing some goddamn bolt. Well, I'll tell you what, uh, 2004,
00:58:552006, uh, GSXR 750 launch it at Ryuyo in Japan. Mr. EO was the project leader for that bike.
00:59:06And I've all, I'm always interested to talk to these guys. And I said, well, Mr. EO,
00:59:10you know, what was your first job at Suzuki? And he said, I designed brake levers.
00:59:16Yes. Just the lever. So that was pretty cool that, and it's neat that someone would start
00:59:23at that level, but yeah, I mean, you, you know, somebody has to think about everything and, uh,
00:59:27you know, I, I, the Taglioni era and doing the V twin, I always had this impression that they
00:59:35were sort of teetering on the brink, but I was interested to read the interview and have him say
00:59:40that he had no constraints on, you know, designing that on designing that engine. So maybe they were
00:59:45just throwing everything they had at it as the, you know, the Hail Mary, I don't know what the
00:59:51Italian word. Well, I mean, I guess Hail Mary works in Italian. It just doesn't work for a
00:59:54football pass football pass. But, um, I think they, they understood that, uh,
01:00:05little automobiles like the Fiat 600 had taken the transportation market that pulled the rug
01:00:11out from under all those singles. They had to move forward with a big motorcycle. They had to.
01:00:19So once again, it's a necessity driven engineering. How are we going to make
01:00:25acceptable power without having bloated displacement chugging along at 6,500 RPM
01:00:34and Taglioni knew exactly what to do. We'll take two of these singles for which we have
01:00:41all the tooling and we'll put them on a new crank case at 90 degrees between the cylinder axes.
01:00:51And we'll be able to run this thing to fantastic RPM. I stood in the shadow of the,
01:00:59of Ducati's glass fan in 1972 at Imola with Paul Smart and my English writer, Cliff Carr.
01:01:09And Paul was saying, they're, they're telling me to upshift this thing at 9,800 RPM. He said,
01:01:18is that even possible? Because remember 7,200 RPM was considered radical territory for a max
01:01:28Norton 500. And he said, they're telling me it can go safely to 11,000.
01:01:36So he was, he was having to poise his leading foot above entirely new territory for him.
01:01:47And he made sense of it very quickly and won the race. And that whole thing came about because
01:01:55Ducati, somebody at Ducati phoned, his wife was the one who picked up the phone because he was
01:02:04away at the time. And she said, oh, a race at Imola, Ducati? Yeah, I think he'd like to do it.
01:02:13So when he came home, they were making the air tickets.
01:02:19Amazing.
01:02:20And it was, it was put together in, in, at mad speed and worked out great.
01:02:26Well, the advance of that motorcycle is demonstrated in the street product and,
01:02:34you know, I wasn't there for it. I'm not quite that old, but I've had the opportunity to ride
01:02:39a lot of things from the era. CB750 beautifully restored, essentially perfect as, as delivered
01:02:45CB750 from 1969. I've, I have at this point, probably about 20,000 miles on Norton Commandos.
01:02:55A 1974, eight 50, really great running motor, 45 pound feet of torque on our dyno.
01:03:01Really, you know, spectacular, not that hard to start. I mean, you got to throw your leg at it.
01:03:06Really certain it asks things of you, you know, the rubber mounts pretty cool shakes like a beast
01:03:11until you, somebody throws the light switch at about 3,200 when the ice elastics that's rubber
01:03:16mounting, you know, it's too much to explain right now, but it's smoothed out the inherent
01:03:21vibration of a parallel twin. And it was the only way that, that Norton could make the horsepower
01:03:28without vibrating the riders eyeballs out. And I've ridden an unbalanced big Norton cafe racer
01:03:34in a, you know, uh, uh, uh, Featherbed and I'll tell you what I really, I mean, you know,
01:03:44an ice elastic frame Norton commando, it handles good, but it's not sweet the way a Featherbed is,
01:03:49but it handles good. And I would rather have the good handle without the,
01:03:53my hands disappearing at 3,000. So great motorcycle ridden a lot. And then I got onto a beautifully
01:04:01restored, uh, seven 50 GT. So a 70 would have been a 72 probably. It had animal carburetors
01:04:09and it was very stock. It had the, the vacuum cleaner things that would like,
01:04:13they were corrugated. They went up to the airbox and at high RPM, they would,
01:04:17oh, they would squeeze down. They were a little restrictive, but yeah, it was the,
01:04:23it was the street setup. Um, all that being said, perfectly set up bike, beautifully done.
01:04:30I was very interested to ride it as a person who'd ridden Norton's quite a bit. And I got
01:04:34the Ducati and as I would do with the Norton, I was looking for compression so that I could be
01:04:41up against compression when I jumped off the ground and then swung my leg through to get it
01:04:48to fire. And I looked for top center and the Ducati just started. Yeah, it was, it was like,
01:04:57it was as if I had pushed a button. I just went like, I'm like, where's top. And I was like,
01:05:03oh my. And then I wrote it. Uh, I wrote it two days. I wrote it for photos and I just
01:05:07wrote it around. We did a story about V twins. Um, we had, uh, the Suzuki, um, SV 1000 was
01:05:15existing at that time. And it was, it wouldn't have existed without Ducati making its reputation
01:05:21in twins. And, um, in any case that, that 74, 72, 74 Ducati V twin was a revelation to as a window
01:05:31looking back in time. And I'm sure they were harder to find and there was, you know, beveled
01:05:37driven overhead cams that would bring pause to some people. But in terms of riding around
01:05:43and ease of starting and smoothness, more than equal, I mean, much smoother than a Norton
01:05:51different personalities, of course. And there's reasons to like the Norton, but
01:05:56a really remarkably good street bike. And this was a spring head. It wasn't a Desmos,
01:06:00it's a run of the mill motorcycle for us mortals who could barely afford it. Right. But great,
01:06:06great street bike for the time.
01:06:13So where does that leave us? I think, uh, we all have questions about the future. Does the
01:06:21motorcycle have a future? Some are the, will the European commission make some strange decision?
01:06:29Well, uh, one of the people at Ducati on one of my trips there said,
01:06:36when the last motorcycle is built, it will be a Ducati
01:06:43because they intend to stay the course. And, uh, people are pointing to an electric future.
01:06:52Harley gave it saluted that flag for a while and saw that their customers were not saluting.
01:07:03It's all very complicated, but Ducati lives in continuous revolution. And I'd be willing to bet
01:07:13that whatever comes, they will get on top of it and make a nice solution.
01:07:21Yeah. What are we looking for from motorcycles? We want them to be, uh,
01:07:33exciting and satisfying and fulfill our dreams in whatever form that takes. We just need
01:07:40passionate people who, uh, have a lot of engineering background and prowess and can
01:07:45take their crazy ideas. Like you were talking about your imagery the other day, looking out
01:07:49the window of his car at the stoplight saying, well, I wonder if an oval piston would work
01:07:55and that they have the resources to have a go. They did in a very big way. So, uh, I think this
01:08:03is, uh, there's lots more to come. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening folks. That's it for Ducati
01:08:13and it's not between this or partially not between this, um, appreciate the comments.
01:08:19I even appreciate the guy who said I'm not mentally qualified to talk to Kevin Cameron
01:08:24in the comments. It's pretty good. We do love the comments, good and bad. You know, we are all
01:08:30students here. Yes, we are. I've ridden a lot of bikes. I hope I give myself credit for that. I've
01:08:36ridden a lot of bikes everywhere around the world. And, um, as ever, we enjoy the conversation,
01:08:43um, get down to the comments, talk to us, subscribe. We appreciate you listening and
01:08:48we will catch you next time.