Lockdown has some benefits. I spent most of yesterday designing the motorbike that I thought Ducati should have put the new V4 engine in. How many of you would be interested in buying one of these? Here’s my spec. Personally for touring I’m happy to trade horsepower for torque. There’d still be enough power there to lose your license quite easily. However I’ve proposed two engine variants. DUCATI ST V4 Design proposal. Capacity 1158cc V4. Two engine models: 145 Hp max torque 140Nm 200 Hp max torque 100Nm (R model) Dry Weight 200Kg or less. Front Tyre 120/70 zr 17 Rear Tyre 195/55 zr 17 Seat height 800 - 820mm Cast aluminium monocoque frame and rear sub frame. Facility to mount hard luggage. Rear brake reservoir mounted away from the heat of the engine.
Exactly what I was after in this thread:- https://www.ducatiforum.co.uk/threads/all-new-v4-ducati-sport-tourer.82508/ I wouldn’t even want it to look too much like the Panigale tbh, it needs its own identity to differentiate it as a sports tourer model, wouldn’t want it any less than 160 bhp though
I was looking for that thread and didn’t find it. It just struck me that more torque is more usable on the road. Ducati usually go for HP rather than torque anyway. That’s why I thought a 200hp engine from the Streetfighter would be a good option.
Apart from the engine specs you talk about isn’t that the gap in the market the current SuperSport is supposed to fill?
Nah, the Supersport is too small. This would be a bigger machine but not quite as big as the outgoing Multistrada. Maybe physically lower than a Multistrada and a touch lighter. You can’t really do much 2 up on a Supersport but I’d expect something like this to be capable of it.
So after being up for over 24 hours as a “would you buy it” poll, we’ve only got 8 people interested in it.
Well how many people are in the market at any one time? It’s 8 more than are interested in buying the new Multistrada though! Says something.
I think you should put the Supersport back end on it, because the superbike front and multi back are too far apart, good effort though!
We have 18k plus members on the site with regularly 650 people participating/viewing the site on average at any one time (like right now). IME I wouldn’t think 10 (gone up from 8 earlier) interested parties from those sort of numbers would excite someone in charge of product development in today’s market, especially given that Audi are numbers driven. I would think they see more “mileage” in the development of electric bikes for the masses. Just my opinion of course
Yeah, fair point but they seem to have built one that has registered zero votes so far. That’ll change admittedly. I’m sure the new Multi has many good points. I’ve no doubt the engine is great especially if they’re confident enough with the truly impressive service intervals. The electronics package and various other aspects of the new machine are great. I’d really like them to succeed with it and I’m sure there will be quite a few riders move over from BMW as well as other areas. 99.9% of riders will be riding a £20k bike on the road and not off road. For me it makes far more sense to take that great new engine + other attributes and put it in a road bike whatever the style. Then again 4 x 4 cars sell like hot cakes and they don’t go off road. Maybe the motorbike market will work going down that route. My only reservation about that logic is you can’t fall off a 4 x 4, usually.
Yeah, good point, with a little more work that would be an improvement. What I liked about this design was that it looked like a female lying face down. And when the rider mounted the bike... he was in the saddle! Can you see the knees, the torso and the elbows? Woof! That’s got to sell.