But it's not aimed at older riders. It's Ducati trying to ensure they still have a customer market in 10 years time.
+1 it’s an entry level bike so obvs not for most of us as we are already owners. But a great opportunity to bring new and young owners to the marque, hopefully to buy another Ducati in a few years.
My Husky is 950mm and I’m a short arse, you get used to it. Absolutely no chance of both feet on the floor when stationary.
When I test rode the hypermotard a few years back, I concluded that it was about 30kg too heavy and the seat height about 3 inches too high for it to be something you throw around. Looks like the new mono has addressed one of those issues...... shame as the seat height would have been a much easier problem to address. Otherwise looks a great bit of kit.
Found this article, https://www.visordown.com/features/top-10s/top-10-best-supermotos, which gives a brief insight into how the supermoto (French supermotard) became popular. Apart from the small capacity offerings, I still don’t see where the market sits except that it’s going to be very small for a bike costing over £11,000. Andy
Most european markets are at least double the size of the UK and Italy nearly 3 times. In the scheme of things, the UK market is relatively small. And they have a lot more younger people riding bikes.
At 12k it does strike me as a wealthy middle aged hipster version of what they think is an entry level youth bike to be used for occasional summer B road hooning. A task at which I have no doubt it'll be great but lets not think it's going to be on the radar of the A2 and newbie licence holding crowd. Let alone as a way into the Ducati marque. It's way too focused for that and you only have to look to see what they are buying from Yamaha/Kawasaki/Honda/Triumph... R6s, Tracers, Zs, Ninjas, CBRs et al. Relatively benign twins with decent power outputs & all styled like their bigger brothers. Machines that are all easy to use, capable, comfortable & exciting on the road and a real entry into a particular manufacturers range. And all at probably half the price.
So you’ll wait for stock to be discounted or an ex demo? Just buy a GG, not a Ducati but a heavy dose of Red and cheaper than the KTM/Husqvarna flavour.
A segment that has only one direct opponent for now, although I’ve seen rumours of Husqvarna testing a 901 SMT along the styling of the vitpilen 701.
