Although Ducati is now owned by Automobili Lamborghini, the Bologna company is regarded as the Ferrari of the motorcycle world. Since the 1950s, its sporting motorcycles have been a favorite target of racers, tweakers and customizers.
In the custom world, the SportClassic is regarded as the archetypal modern-day café racer. Designed by Pierre Terblanche and launched in 2003, the SportClassic was way ahead of its time and sold poorly until its demise in 2010. But nowadays, values of Ducati models are rising rapidly and the styling is uniquely pleasing to the eye.
The Pantah and Monster have always been popular Ducati bikes with builders, but we’re now seeing the purer sportbikes creeping into the scene—often with ‘retro fighter’ builds—and a huge number of Scrambler customs.
If there’s something missing from Ducati’s current lineup, it’s a modern cafe racer with strong ties to the past. Sure, there’s the oddly named Scrambler Cafe Racer—but that submodel doesn’t evoke as much nostalgia as a SportClassic or MH900e. What Ducati really needs is something in the same vein as this magnificent Ducati 600SL Pantah.…
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A Ducati 900SS rebuilt in the style of the classic 900 Super Sport Desmo, a Moto Guzzi V7 Sport endurance racer converted for road use, a Honda CBX750 cafe racer from Spain, and the strange tale of the BFG/MBK 1300 motorcycle—powered by a Citroën car engine.
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If you’d asked me yesterday when Ducati got its first Isle of Man TT win, I’d have scratched my head and then suggested Mike Hailwood in 1978, on the 900SS. I’d have been wrong. The first machine from Bologna to win a trophy at the TT was a 250 Mach 1, when Alistair Mike Rogers…
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A wild new Vyrus superbike from Italy, a Honda XR600 built for a Spanish Dakar racer, and a stylish collection of custom motorcycle coloring pages from the British artist Ian Galvin.
Read more »We’re always impressed when a custom motorcycle design is so cohesive, it could easily be a factory effort. Or, at the very…
Read more »Like any proper cult vehicle, the Ducati SportClassic was hugely under-appreciated when it was first released. That’s probably because it was ahead…
Read more »There’s an unspoken truth about building custom motorcycles: you don’t have to change everything. Sometimes it’s enough to just switch up a…
Read more »A Gucci-inspired Ducati Monster S2R from Estonia, a classic Triton from one of Britain’s best builders, plus a short appreciation of Colin…
Read more »Mike Vienne is a man obsessed by weight. His specialty is turning blunt knives into razor-sharp scalpels: or rather, improving sportbikes by…
Read more »The incomparable Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show went down this past weekend, and as usual the brightest stars of the Japanese custom…
Read more »There are motorcycles that are considered so sacred, you wouldn’t dare customize them. And there are motorcycles that work so well out…
Read more »There are always a few surprises at the EICMA motorcycle show. This year, one of the biggest was the launch of this…
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