Yes this is correct - but the vin numbers on the 2000 and earlier bikes weren’t stamped as homologation specials - then in 2001 these last SPS and the 996R got these slightly different VIN’s that marked them specifically as off road use only. What I’m surmising is that this change of VIN coding coincides with the new legislation that came in 2001 - potentially the authorities were tightening up on loopholes. I don’t think these bikes were “grey market” in the sense that they were made for another market and imported through unofficial channels - they were imported by Ducati directly to official dealerships and stamped with US specific VIN’s (euro VIN’s are a totally different format). They also have MPH only speedo’s - UK bikes should have MPH with secondary KM dials and Euro bikes KM only.
lol - I was writing my previous post while you posted this! Nice to get a statement from Falloon about this specific bike! This seems to confirm what I thought even though Falloon’s info might not completely tally with the production dates it generally lines up - I think it’s unlikely Ducati would have stamped frames they built in 1999 with a 2001 date code but chances are the stock was left over unstamped and the final run completed in 2000. Frames are supposed to be stamped on production though so it does make me wonder if the actual frame number is stamped at time of manufacture and the market specific part of the VIN info added at assembly time. This would explain why frame number rarely matches production numbers sequentially.
Makes sense. I always wondered why my 2000 & 2001 748R VINs were different.. The 2000 was ZDM3SB (off-road/racing, Superbike) The 2001 was ZDM3H7 (off-road/racing, homologation)
Totally agree, they were tightening the loophole in the US. To be clear, I wasn't saying the 2001 MY was a grey market, only that prior years were and 2001 was the first they were not. Btw, I'm the user anguilla1980 when I post on BaT.
Haha - the small world of detailed obsessed Ducati fanboys I was unknowingly quoting you - makes sense!
Speaking of obsession, I messaged Mr. Falloon about the 18-digit VIN oddity and the production date sticker… Here’s his clarification:
Interesting what he says about the stickers - not a production date, but a date they were moved from a warehouse to a shipping point!. But I would love to know at what point in production a frame number gets stamped! I have been thinking - you can buy a blank frame from the manufacturer - which would indicate the frames are just a stock item - and possibly these bikes could be stamped only when distributed from said warehouse! If they were built as street bikes and modified then the VINs would have to have been stamped after the fact - otherwise they couldn’t have been designated homologation. I always assumed the VIN was assigned to a vehicle during production - the idea that a bike could be manufactured in 1999 and then sit there in a warehouse with no VIN just seems wrong.
This has got to be a special case to overflow 996 bikes because I know this does not apply to the 996R - which agrees with how Ian is framing it. The R had the VIN stamped over the paint and the assembly stickers say England and GBR all over it. The SPS VIN has been started at one point, finished at another, then painted (see pics), the front end put back on the frame neck (had to be off to do this), then the stickers with the later date applied to the bike along with all the other country destination-specific stickers. It's in the realm of manufacturer discretion to not use all VIN allocations for a certain year and to stamp an earlier made vehicle with a VIN for a later year - so long as the vehicle complies with that same years government requirements as the VIN applied. I've seen this on cars often, and vice versa where a new car is made and a left over VIN from a previous year is used - because the vehicle is built identically to that years motor vehicle regulations. No harm no foul. The shipping point was a 3rd party that in 2001 (SIMA in Modena) would either load domestic (meaning EU country) bikes onto stillage racks for lorry delivery to concessionaires or put them into wooden crates for export via sea trains on ship. I literally have a video documentary showing this with a Ducati employee explaining it. So I'm sure Ian means some Ducati production over-flow storage to some staging area where the frame VIN was "finished" and the assembly completed. Then it left for the shipping logistics partner. He's just calling a "shipping point" a finally assembly point. I'm sure I'm being overly OCD and pedantic on this point so I'll shut up now lol. Now I say the VIN finished or stamped again because it looks a little sus. Here is the SPS VIN stamp compared to my 996R VIN stamp (I'm going to not blur mine here so you get the unaltered original image). You can see the SPS was painted AFTER stamping where mine was stamped only after paint, and on the SPS you can see this odd "surrounding area" where the paint looks blown in compared to the rest of the frame paint. To MY eyes, it looks like the ZDM3H was stamped, then the bike stored, then the rest of the VIN stamped (notice the SLIGHTLY smaller font) and the paint blown in to match. Just sayin.
Shower thought..... so does the "all-model 2001" clutch slave recall apply? Like did they put on a 1999/2000 slave cylinder or did it get a MY 2001 slave cylinder?
The 1-mile 2001 996 SPS (US spec) just sold for US$75,600 including the BaT 5% buyer fee. From what I can tell, it was missing its cover, Termi exhaust/ECU, manuals/booklets, and MSO. Only had the stand, keys, and toolkit.
Randomly, I was down an unrelated rabbit hole today and came across this Gem regarding the 2001 SPS. It was an archived page on the ProItalia (dealer) website:
