Ok, let me speak to him as I know him fairly well. It may be the case that these bikes are a sore point, hinted at by him saying that he didn't know why they released these bikes. Livio wants to have as much history in the museum as possible but has very limited space and the Italians are well known for their lack of organisation skills and that extends to keeping good records! Much of the early history of Ducati does not exist, and it relies on people like Livio to piece together what he can from what little there is left kicking about the far reaches of the factory. Things are much better now but even fifteen/twenty years ago this was not the case. I expect this prototype frame was stored somewhere in the factory and Corse requisitioned it to build display bikes. Those display bikes then got sold off, either correctly or incorrectly, and the next person to go looking for the frame found a space where it should have been. History lost. But whatever that case I'll ask and hopefully we'll get a bit more to the story.
Form what you're saying if I've read this right, it is known that there were five made and this is one of them, and yet ducati are owning up to four chassis numbers. I wonder then given your machine's chassis number was painted over perhaps at some point in the prototype lifecycle your chassis number was deleted (end of life or cycle) ? It may be that this was sold to sandisk man as a static bike? That would go some way into explaining their lack of co-operation especially as now its running? Also knowing the way most Italian companies of that ilk work its not unreasonable to find a lot of info not written down or not written on the bill of sale, that and of course muddied by the fact that there was the sponsorship tie in at the time so Sandisk would have been in a position to demand vehicles and the like as show peices for sponsor events / functions and displays. When vodafone used to sponsor Ferrari they would demand the car ahead of lauch to show at their shareholder meetings so a full replica chassis would have to be mocked up for them - which had to fire up and sing as well. But when you were getting title sponsor sums of money off them you weren't exactly going to say no however much it pissed you off.
Your missing a lot of what has been said previously, easy to do as it was all a bit confusing. The other 4 were pre production prototypes - I think 18 of these were made - they all had 11 digit VINs. Prior to these 5 hand built prototypes were made and I believe mine to be the first of these. or a prior mock up - nit entirely sure. The 5 I mentioned were all converted as display items in Stoners Championship year and all the frames were over painted then. Have a read from the original power point and it may be less confusing - it may not of course
I was last year - I sent them the power point at the start of this thread and told them what I thought I had. There was denial as such, but the door was soon closed on me.
Ok, so the response was that Livio knows the story, has seen the pictures but is unable to give any info as this is not his area - he is on the historical side and this is too new! He says that the only people who will be able to help are Corse, but I get the impression that you might be pissing in the wind trying to get any info out of them. Let me ask a few of my contacts to see if anyone knows of a contact there who may be able to help you out.
Having reviewed your PowerPoint, is it possible that of the 5 Pre-Production bikes that were requested, the factory could only come up with 4 in time (though there were eventually 18) and so made up the number with your prototype - a secret they do not want publicised and the reason for Livio's prickliness over a) the fact that an important piece of history was sacrificed; b) that he's getting put on the spot by being asked awkward questions over an embarrassing secret they'd rather keep quiet? This may also explain Corse's unhelpfulness because they 'pinched' the prototype in order to fool the sponsor and Mr Bonomi - perhaps putting Ducati in breach of contract with the sponsor who'd called for pre-production models, not prototypes?
Quite possibly either an error or someone fulfilling a request to get a job done yes. Although I would think Livio would not know or have been told this if he asked them last year. He seemed miffed that they had released any of the 5 bikes and never categorized this one to be different at the time. When I contacted him I didn't have the VIN evidence, but I did have the prototype part evidence on which he didn't comment.
I have no experience of Ducati's inner workings, but I have to say that it seems entirely plausible to me that Sandisk wanted the bikes, they weren't going to be running but just sitting about on podiums. So Ducati just lashed one up with the prototype stuff lying around thinking "that's close enough and we weren't going to be doing anything with those bits anyway. Job done". In the spirits company I worked for, although there was a museum and we were all encouraged to send stuff to it (promotional items we had had made) in reality, very little was ever sent. It was too time consuming and too expensive and in any case, if every market had sent everything they had produced for every brand, the museum would have had to become a monster warehouse. Companies are there to make money, and look to the future. It's essentially only brand anoraks like ourselves who are that bothered about the past. A prototype that could be put to some other use and save time, effort and money would be just the ticket. Naturally, you wouldn't expect everyone in the company to share this viewpoint as they all have different areas of interest. My own boss wouldn't have been that interested if I was making the archivist in Scotland happy.
I do think it more likely that the bike was sat in a corner in one piece - after 6 years it's doubtful that all the early prototype parts were still available to build a bike knowing that only 5 sets of parts were made (source: the book Birth of a Legend). Production parts would have been more readily to hand and there is no cross pollination of parts on this bike, all parts are prototype or ST4S/998 borrowed parts other than the changes made in 2006/7. No matter if disassembled and re assembled, I guess it is still what it is.
Well nothing since last weeks phone calls and the updated power point sent with VIN number details - wondering if to mail again or sit back and wait for another week :Wideyed:
