The 748 was written off on the day of this pic. Dads SP4 nearly got there. View attachment 8156 View attachment 8157 View attachment 8158
Score 2 for me (as far as Ins Co were concerned) 1 - 1993 900SS - Head -on with a Spaniard on a ZZR1100 on the Isle of Man in 1995. 2 - 1997 916 Bip - Owned from new - Rear ended by a Range Rover while waiting in a traffic queue. They both survived and went on to the racetrack - the 900 went on to win a club championship in the hands of someone far more talented than me and was allegedly seen back on the road after that. The 916 was bought by a mate as a trackday bike.
The only bike I've written off was my z1000. I've only had 1 ducati and its still in one piece, well it was when I last saw it :tongue:
I wrote off my 748R (Ducati #1 of 3 I have had) according to the insurance co, anyway, but she was reborn as a very bling track bike and then went on to have a glittering race career in the gentle hands of Mr Lister :biggrin: (with a few monumental ups, shall we say, along the way). Not bad for an unloved lass from the Isle of Sheppey (that's where I got her from - the previous owner just couldn't get on with her and went back to his beemer, or whatever s#itheap it was). She's still out there in a race series, with a new owner, looking pretty and going like the clappers...
One 1000ds Multi. Went straight out again and bought another one with the insurance money. Remember kids, don't go out riding at 8am on a Sunday morning with a massive hang over.
One for me also, a 1098S Tricolore - one of the first in the country... ...I managed all the way to Misano & back for WDW2007, but then only got 7 miles around the Bristol ring road before I high sided on diesel at a roundabout. Luckily a Ducati friend managed to find me one of the last left in the country, which I, or rather my insurance company, bought for me 2 days after being discharged form hospital :smile:
0 - but I have dropped a hyper and broke my scaphoid - light damage to bike only and wasn't written off....
89 900ssmahoosive engine blow up 92 900ss fire 99 st2 broke it coz no one would give a decent price complete Steve B
A big zero for Ducati write off's but then I've only had/got this one. Only 1 write off due to a smidsy back in 1980 a pristine CB250N.
I've only written-off one Ducati, but I did it in spectacular style and very strange circumstances. I told the story five years ago on the old Ducatisti site ... and guess what? I was lucky enough to have a back-up (!) so here it is again, reproduced word-for-word. Some of you may remember this .... I'd always fancied a Ducati sports bike but could never afford it or justify having such a single-minded bike. As I approached the big 4-oh last year I began to realise that it might be now or never. The 'mid-life crisis' supplied the motivation and my family supplied the justification. With two small kids, it had got to the stage where I was only getting out on my VFR800 at weekends and the odd evening, and my wife was never on the pillion. Moreover, as I found myself researching and browsing for Ducati's on the internet and in bike shops, I realised I could get the money together if I really wanted to. All it needed was a couple of test rides and after that there was no turning back. It was the 996SPS that did it. I tried the new 999s and 749s and they were nice, but the used 996SPS that I tried from a local dealer just blew me away. It wasn't in the best nick but riding it had me laughing out loud and grinning from ear to ear. After a lifetime of 4-cylinder Jap bikes the engine felt awesome, the ride was so focussed and the sound of those termis ... outrageous! After that I dismissed the 999 and 749 as too refined - I loved the harder edge of the older bike. The question though was whether to go for the slightly ropey 996SPS or splash-out on a brand new bike ... my eye had been caught by a nice, shiny, brand-new 998 Final Edition just up the road ... the last new one in the country. I was in a real quandry. I loved the idea of a new bike, and most people said go for the 998 if you can afford it but of course I couldn't test ride it so I couldn't be sure that it would feel like the 996SPS. Of course it had the same frame and shape, but the engine was the same as the 999. What was I to do? After much umm-ing and ahh-ing, days spent hanging round both dealers looking at the bikes and getting as many opinions as I could via the internet I finally decided on the 998FE. I figured I deserved a nice big 40th birthday present for myself. I'd never had a brand-new bike before and if I'm honest I quite fancied the idea of owning the last example of the last model ever built around the iconic shape. I picked it up the day after my birthday, ready modded with 50mm carbon termis, hugger etc. The journey up had been a nightmare because of a crash on the motorway so there was no way I was going home that way ... I decided to take the twisty back-roads home. The salesman took me through the machine, told me to take it easy on the new tyres and waved me off. It was a bright sunny morning in mid July. Now I suspect that this might be some kind of record, because less than 30 minutes and 30 miles later I suddenly found myself standing in the road in the middle of nowhere, as if suddenly been teleported in true Star Trek style. 'Hello, where am I'? .... 'how did I get here then'? .... 'wasn't I on a bike a minute ago?' .... 'no, don't be stupid, there's no bike here' .... 'hang-on a minute' .... 'it's coming back to me now' .... 'one minute I was going nicely round a sweet 90 degree left hander' .... 'and the next thing I remember was my head hitting the ground and thinking "bloody hell I don't believe it ... I've fallen off" .... 'no warning or anything' .... 'I don't believe it' .... 'where's the bike then'? .... 'must be my mind playing tricks on me' .... 'there's no bike here' .... 'hang-on, let's sit down a mo and get my head together' ..... So I walk to the side of the road, notice that I'm limping a bit and there is a nice hole in the right knee of my leathers, sit down and take my lid off. After a minute or two I get my head straight and realise that I have indeed binned my brand new bike which is nowhere to be seen and I'm in the middle of bloody nowhere with no mobile phone. I have a look around and finally find my pride and joy through some bushes laying on her right hand side at the bottom of a bloody great ditch! Otherwise though she looks fine. This is bloody bizarre. I crashed before I even knew it - no warning at all. I can't remember anything between going round the corner and my head hitting the road, and suddenly I find myself standing there in the dead quiet of the countryside with no Ducati. Surreal. I'm just getting used to the idea when something even more bizarre happens, and suddenly I'm back to thinking I must be dreaming it. From out of a dirt track at the side of the road pulls a bloody great big, bright-red 44 tonne truck tractor unit, custom painted with Foggy Ducati all over it. The driver leans out and asks me if I'm alright. This is just too much of a coincidence, and way too surreal and I think my brain just checks out again for a while because I tell him I'm fine and I've just come off my bike but I could do with borrowing his mobile phone if he has one. Before I know it I have called my wife, told her what has happened and the bloke has gone. I didn't even comment to him on his beautiful truck and the fact that my beautiful bike was just like Foggy used to ride. Anyway, I sit there for another 30 mins or so with hardly a car passing until my Mrs rolls-up. She found the corner on the map no trouble, even though all I could tell her was roughly where I was heading from and to. She had called my insurance company and a recovery truck arrived a few minutes later. It took two blokes to get the bike out of the ditch, and when they did it became clear that it wasn't Ok at all. In fact the right hand side was pretty badly damaged and it looked like the headstock was broken. How the left hand side had escaped and the right hand side got trashed when I binned-it on a left hander is beyond me. The only thing I can think of is that it high-sided as I came-out of the corner. I was on new tyres, and that might explain why I had no warning at all before finding myself off the bike. Mad. So anyways, the wife took me off to hospital where we got to get a proper look at my injuries. Unfortunately the leathers on my right knee had shifted so that the armour wasn't in the right place to do its job. The road wore through my leathers and through my leg down to the knee cap - I had a neat hole the size of a 50p piece in my knee through which you could see the bone. I had also detached a tendon in my thumb so I couldn't bend it. Bummer. A few days in hospital, a coupla weeks off work, a bit of physio and I was on the mend .... the same couldn't be said for my bike tho. The recovery truck took it back to the dealer, and they said on first inspection that it didn't look too bad. When the repairs list came back though, the insurance company wrote the bugger off ... and I hadn't even got it home! Thankfully when I bought it I had taken out 'gap' insurance which guaranteed full new value in the event of write-off. Moreover, to be honest I was glad that they had written it off. You never feel quite the same about a bike once its been down the road - it's never quite the same. More importantly, in the 30 mins I had the bike, I must admit I was a little disappointed. Remember, I hadn't ridden it before and I was hoping that it had the same feeling as the 996SPS. Of course it didn't .... the testastretta engine was much more refined just like in the 999 ... so I should have guessed. It just didn't have the 'headbanging' feel of the SPS that had me laughing out loud on the test ride. So, my mind made-up, while I was waiting for the insurance money to come through I started looking around for a nice 996SPS ....
Good story. I'm amazed at the efficiency of your wife. Mine wouldn't do anything that useful. :smile:
