Judging the quality of newer Ducatis (newer than my 1997 Supersport) against the 2007 Harley I bought, the build quality and the finish is superior on the Harley.
The trellis frame and dry clutches have gone and soon so will be the ability to lean over on a corner! Still, at least I'll be able to dust off my leather chaps
At least it will stop the stupid how many miles per gallon threads. As everyone knows there is no better machine at producing noise without the by product of horse power.
It worked out so well when HD aquired MV they've decided another Italian mc brand is needed in the stable. It'll cost well over 10x the MV debacle. http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2008/july/jul1108-harley-davidson-buys-mv-agusta/
Be a right b*****d when it comes to decisions with threads, bolts and tool sizes - Will Ducati go all AF and UNC or will Harley go all Metric? I have got loads of metric socket head stainless bolts that I got for the Italian bikes, but the Harley is a complete mixture of AF hex heads; Torx (big ones) and Spline bolts - all UNC as far as I can tell.
All the most sought-after classic Ducati models of the 1970s and 80s had notoriously poor build quality. This was offset by brilliant design. Flaky paint and corroding screws are easy to fix; poor designs aren't. Incidentally Ducati was owned by Texas Pacific, an American private equity fund, from 1996 for a while. Didn't do much harm, did it?
I wonder if they will re-teach Ducati how to make water pumps? hopefully they won't replace camchains with Pushrods... In all seriousness, it must have been coming a while, I hope Ducati has a more robust management structure to withstand the buy out because it didn't work well for MV, initial investment helped develop new models for sure, but then before the bikes were delivered HD had dumped the firm and got out making a huge profit.
Since Polaris bought Indian motorcycles, Harley have had to raise their game and the quality has improved. I remember being at Sturgis's 75th anniversary and I also attended Sturgis the previous 5 years and the build quality is improving on Harley's noticably Don't get me wrong, in Europe I would still only have either as a toy rather than a daily as the build quality isn't Honda quality but then, Honda isn't even Honda quality these days. Ducati, even after 5 years of Audi owning Ducati have put out more technical bikes but bikes that seem consistent with the unreliability that Italian motorcycles are famed for. At the moment Ducati seems to be losing what Ducati is and in some offerings, seem to be moving towards being clone bikes that any manufacturer could have produced. Generally, it feels, that kids get as far as scooters or Chinese 125's but not onward as a large group to the bigger bikes and given so many new big bikes are getting into the price of a small deposit on a flat, for me it feels the new blood isn't coming through. At some point I feel the "exclusive" and expensive brands will come under one corporate roof with the remainers punting out smaller model range numbers of blandness
I wish they were all UNC but they also use UNF and a few other odd ball threads and they even utilise left hand threads on some of the clutch assemblies And they have a multitude of odd ball bolt head sizes Have a 52 Panhead and have gad to constantly expand my tool collection to work on it As fro HD development my panhead has 53 hop on the dyno, a standard evo has 48-52 hp so good help ducati if that is the best development they can do in 30 odd years
A belt drive Mutley? At least we'll get some seriously noisy exhausts as standard. The New Ducati 1850cc with 108Bhp... super light weight at 330Kg.... I don't think the relationship with Ohlins will last long.... "who needs suspension?" is Hardlyabletoos thoughts.
Have to agree with AirCon there, I'm not a fan either. It appears to be a style choice rather than a motorcycle, and a not very good one at that. Brilliant marketing ploy though.
