I had been about a year into my car apprenticeship, bought a knackered gp100, stripped, cleaned, mot'd, sold made about £70 well chuffed, so next project was rd350lc, as above painted in pearl candy cadbury purple and No Fear decals, made loads so this then was a big mistake, saw an advert for kwak 750 triple, didn't know what it was back then so seething now! but got to ringwood hamps to find a 750 2 stroke, I remember smiling at the thought of the power, loaded 6 boxes into trailer, rebuilt properly as a few older friends said they were the bike of the time still remember plate BRU 172K, cost me a packet considering I was earning £75 a week back then! but was advised to do a great job, made and absolute fortune on the job.... Now your gonna laugh & cry here, I sold a matching numbers authentic restored build 750 triple for £3800 and thought I was chuffed... Look at the ruddy prices now, if I find any pics I'll show, all this love afair and I still had no licence to ride, mum wouldn't let me! 16 years later after beating cancer I passed my test and bought my R6, love affair found last last and now own what I believe is the most appreciating Ducati there is!!
Congratulations folks. These are great stories. We're really getting something together here. Funny too.
I don't believe you. Evidence please, photographic evidence. Black n white will do if they only had it then. And one pre....err...September wasn't it? Hate to mention it.
I can't remember really how old I was my dad never had a bike my mum had an ex killed on a trident so was adamant I wasnt going to get one. But Evel Knievel was at his height of his fame came to wembley smashed hisself to pieces again I was hooked!! Got a moped 3 months before my 16th birthday even after more protest from the parents. Only had it a week had it taken apart just to see how it worked, learnt an important lesson about over torquing cylinder head studs putting it back together. Passed my test a couple of months after my 16th birthday many embarrassed coppers pulling me over smugly for carrying pillions. Rebuilt a GT 175 ready for my 17th birthday BASTARDS bring in the 125 law bollocks !!! Bought a GT 125!to swap bits over, another lesson learned different frame, so had to rebuild 125 as well. Many bikes later never been more than a year without at least one. (That was last year when I built my extension and didn't want any distractions) As most people had loads I wish I still had. Not much around new that I like, like music most of it was better (not actually but in my eyes) back in the day. I love my guzzi V7 because it rides like an old bike, going to treat myself to some of my favorites one day.
I’m the youngest of 5 boys and all my brothers had bikes at one time or another so it just seemed like the normal thing to do. As a kid one of my brothers would to take me to road race meetings at Lydden and Brands including as a 14 year old schoolboy to the first ever Transatlantic at Brands Hatch on Good Friday 1971. Racing has been a massive interest ever since including doing it myself in the late 70’s and I still have mates from those fantastic times. As for riding - growing up in a Kentish village surrounded by orchards, hop gardens and woods I started at about 10 or 11 beginning with an NSU Quickly, progressing through Lambretta scooters with the bodywork removed, the inevitable Bantams to a Tiger Cub. First road transport was a Mobylette hand painted Dulux purple that my Dad got as payment for a private job (Fizzies etc. hadn’t been invented yet!). First proper bike was a Yamaha YDS7 (basically an RD250 without reed valves). Test was passed within six months and I traded up to a Honda CB500- 4, at 17 I thought I was king of the road! I managed to always hang on to a bike through the years of buying a house and bringing up the kids and have never been without at least one. As for Ducati’s – for a long time I kind of admired them but thought they were over-priced and unreliable so wouldn’t risk buying one. I was put off too because one mate bought an 860GT that I never actually saw run while another bought a brand new Darmah, rode it to Italy where a huge chunk of the cast front wheel fell out a few miles from the Ducati factory so he pushed it to the factory who kindly replaced it and gave him a new front tyre too. The 851 / 888 really piqued my interest and then the 916 was just wow! I got my 916 in 1998 and still have it 36,000 miles later though it doesn’t get too much use these days. A Mutley was added in 2012. Someone once asked me if my bike was a mid-life crisis? My reply was no it’s a whole life crisis.
My father raced motorcycles in the 1950's, and rode bikes into his 60,s. My first bikes from about 6 or 7 years old, included a second world war Corgi, on 12" wheels that were dropped by parachute, a 1970s Bennelli 125 motocross bike, Been hooked on motorcycles ever since, nearly fifty years now.
My love affair started when i was around 8-10 years old and the guy who lived over the road from me had a couple of ducati's so used to hear him about two miles away before he arrived back home. then used to get this rib shattering vibrations when he rode past...... from then on i always said that if i ever get a bike its a ducati December 2014 i bought my first bike 848 Evo (31 years old) the best decision i ever made was to take up riding, took the 848 over to the IOM TT in 2015 for 10 days... joint top best experience of my life!
Pretty late in life getting into bikes, had always been more a fan of the 4 wheeled variety of transport. Then met my wife 3 years ago and she turned me. I got hooked pretty quick and went out and bought my first bike. I knew just enough about it that what ever I got, it had to be red ,and had to be a Ducati. Now the proud owner of a Hyperstrada at the moment. But the love affair has just started and I'm sure it won't be my first and last bike. These days seem to spend every spare minute doing or reading something bike related. So I guess it's never too late to start. Only that you maybe regret wasting too many years prior to this sitting inside a tin top thinking that was living ! How wrong you can be.
My dad has always had bikes and when I was younger sis motocross all the time - I did totally envy him! He sold a car ton but me at DT175 and I got out on it and was absolutely terrified of it. Did about 6 times and a friend blew the engine which ended it there as I was terrified and consequently not very good. Then eventually he got road bikes; R6 after R6 and travelled down to spain yearly and I said one day I'll be coming. Almost 2 years I did my CBT without anyone knowing and got a WR125. That quickly got me up to speed and wanting a proper bike. I see Hypermotard 796 in pristine condition and Dad didn't have a bike so said to him why try a Ducati while waiting for me? So he got it - he's now Ducati through and through! A few months later I did my direct access (again no one knew) and run down to dads to declare I'm ready! Took the Hypermotard and Dad got a panigale. We did wales and spain this year, out first trip. A few things have come our way and things not looking long term so squeezing everything in now. I have the panigale and Dad has a Multiatrada DVT with a trip of Europe next year following the MotoGP to Italy and spain; 5 days after I get married! Yep no honeymoon with the misses An R6 Track bike in making and start all that next year. This is only the start for me and plenty adventures to come!
As children, we'd get to spend the whole of August visiting family in Madrid. One of the highlights was that a couple of Dad's brothers would come home for lunch every day. As soon as we'd hear one of them on his NSU, we'd run to the gate and he'd take us round the block, two of us on the tank and two pillion. Then another uncle would arrive on his Vespa, same thing, except two standing between the leg shields and rider's seat, two pillion and off round the block again - the biggest thrill every day! (Me in the dark t shirt, sandwiched between the twins) Two uncles rode the Vespa from Madrid to Munich to buy a television! Canvas tent, two up, baggage and a valve/cathode ray box all the way back to Madrid!! That Telefunken had pride of place in their home and despite its method of delivery, gave fantastic service for years.. The following year they rode up to stay with us for a week in Hendon, N London, where we lived at the at the time. In the early to mid 60's their sense of adventure on two wheels was inspirational to a young kid - their trips seemed epic. I know there are many greater achievements in the world of travel and exploration, but my uncles were heroes to me and let's face it, they were making trips that many people even today don't, or won't undertake even on vastly more capable machinery, on better roads, better signposting, with GPS, breakdown insurance etc... It was an era where kids would queue for the Saturday morning pictures at the local Odeon and watch the Pathe News about adventurers, explorers, or lumberjacks before an episode of Rocket Man, all in black and white - but I remember getting impatient with all of that when my uncles were at home with their Vespa because my heroes were camped in the garden I blame them for my life on two wheels.
This was my first bike in 1965. It was 80cc and after my push bike felt like a rocket and I was a lot lighter in those days. My first memories of Ducati's was in 1964 when I worked in Kings of Oxford in Bristol during school holidays and Saturday. My main job was building up the small Japanese bikes, 3 to a crate. The exotic bikes At that time were the Ducati 250cc Mach 1 and the 200cc with the dual silencers and very curvy tank. Many of these were picked up by the customers needing to be bump started as they were terrible for starting on the kick start, the electrics were very poor.
My earliest memory is being rushed to hospital on the tank of my dad's 1938 MOV 250cc Velocette. As a curious toddler I had put the first finger on my left hand into the open gears of a manual clothes mangle which my mother was wringing the washing out on. The gears chopped the top of my finger off. My father picked up the top of my finger and raced off to casualty with me between his knees screaming. The top of my finger was stitched back on and I still have the scar. Having been a postal despatch rider during the early part of the war delivering sometimes the worst sort of telegrams, in the fifties, my dad rode motorbikes as a necessity, he was a postal worker sorting mail on the overnight train from Euston to Carlisle. There was no other way of getting there or back from Morden in South London at 4.00 am. When I was 10 my dad borrowed a 500cc Aerial Red Hunter trials outfit and he took me in the "chair" to Goodwood to see the Gold Cup F1 Race. It was a phenomenal race with Clark, Hill, Surtees and Moss all breaking the lap record until Moss had his career ending accident. The outfit still on trials gearing was phenomenally quick to about 45 mph but, being very narrow, was very prone to lifting the inside wheel on left handers, I spent the journey being screamed at to hang out further to get the wheel down. Next year the family went on holiday to Cornwall staying in a guest house at the bottom of a long hill with a fast and bumpy left hander at the bottom. One morning we were just leaving to go to the beach when the wail of a bike could be heard from at least a mile away coming towards us going up through the gears changing at max rpm. Dad and I stood on the inside of the corner transfixed. It came past at about 90mph on full chat, weaving a bit over the bumps. It had a silver fairing with a red tank and black open megaphones. I think it was probably a CB250/350/450 dressed to look like a works Honda. The rider was in a full set of black leathers with a pudding basin helmet. From that moment I knew I wanted to race motorcycles. In the first year of secondary school my new best mate (he still is) told me about a bike in a junk shop near him. I bought it for 10 shillings, it was a Wipac cyclemaster. I had to walk it the 4 miles home, and having repaired the punctures and cleaned the carburettor and plug we started it. The engine sat on a sub frame behind and below the saddle. The only change from a normal bicycle was that the rear tyre was fatter and more heavily built. The crank shaft was extended with a serrated wheel that ran on the circumference of the tyre. A latch arrangement allowed the engine to be raised about an inch and the drive disengaged, so you could use it as a normal bicycle. For the next three weeks my mates and I terrorised the neighbours by riding time trials up and down the bumpy garage road at the back of the house. Unfortunately one of them fell off and bent the crank shaft so that was the end of my first powered two wheeler. A Honda C50 followed by the 90cc C200 (after the C50 got totalled when a pallet fell off a flatbed lorry in front of me in the Hangar lane underpass) saw me through my test. My dad then found a 1948 Matchless G80 500cc pushrod single which had been left to rot under a neighbour's apple tree. After about 2 weeks stripping and cleaning and freeing off the front forks (it was rigid rear) he said I could ride it if I could do 6 consecutive full lock feet up figures of 8 in the back alley (about 12 feet from garage to garage wide and it was difficult to walk it round in that width). My dad would always ride in a flat cap, he didn't like helmets and he astounded me and my mates by dropping his cap on the floor and doing feet up full lock turn whilst retrieving his cap. After about 2 hours I could do it. It was not that difficult on that bike with a low c of g, a huge heavy flywheel and the ability to retard the ignition so it would tick over at about 700 rpm. My first big bike at 16 and I loved it despite the ex War Department WW2 tyres (this was 1968) with no grip whatsoever and more braking available from shutting the throttle than squeezing the front brake lever. The route to my mates house became a race track and it was a good night when I could get 52mph indicated cresting the brow of the bridge on Drayton Bridge road with the back tyre just stepping out as the front wheel went light. After I stopped racing my first Ducati was a fortieth birthday present to myself. I just could not afford the 900SS so it had to be a 750SS which I loved at the time and still have and is awaiting a loving restoration. I took that bike to 4 successive holidays to Italy , over the alps 2 up, it never missed a beat and I only fell off it once. Happy days
This Mach 1 changed my outlook on Ducati, at the time I thought my 848 was the business until my colleague rocked up on this... I'd love one in my workshop
My addiction to Ducati started about '79. I'd had 3-4 years on leaky unreliable Triumphs(from new), refused to ride or own a jap bike although I did contemplate a Z1000 for a while. I started looking at italian bikes. Tried a Lemans mk1 but didnt like the direct shaft drive when going down the box so next to test was a blue/silver 900SS from Bikewise in Leigh Essex. Loved it but couldnt afford it, so I got in touch with a friend of a friend who was into Ducati's and still is, Dave(dk)Evans who suggested a 750 Sport might fit the wallet better. I found one in MCN in Plymouth(300 mile away) that was a bit tatty but cheap and got a lift with a mate on a 750 Bonnie at the weekend to pick it up. It needed a bit of work which was done by Walkers in Wisbech. I had it for a year or two before I got knocked off it and sold it damaged and gave up biking for a few years with a dodgy leg and dodgy wife.
On my back from Dublin heading to belfast after a camping trip,there must have been 20 bikes all 2strokes two up we had girlfriends with us,and a bevel 900ss thundered past with open pipes and disappeared into the distance!thats when I was hooked! " gotta have one of those!"
First time was watching the early scrambler races that used to be on grandstand, then programmes like kickstart. you might recognise the commentator in this clip
The first stirring of my interest in bikes was awakened after watching a Ducati 851 thundering along in heavy traffic, as I was walking on the pavement one day... I didn't know much about Ducatis but started buying bike magazines. My dad had ridden bikes, but that was before he had kids. He had owned a BSA and Norton, and told us stories as kids of wearing out a pair of boots riding gingerly home in the snow, and many other adventures on bikes. The Ducati bug really took hold watching BSB and WSB in the Foggy and Hodgson eras, by which time I was riding bikes. My 998S followed shortly after...
