Ducati Motorcycles

About Ducati

Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. is an Italian company that designs and manufactures motorcycles. Headquartered in Bologna, Italy, Ducati is owned by Audi through its Italian subsidiary Lamborghini.

In 1926 Antonio Cavalieri Ducati and his three sons, Adriano, Marcello, and Bruno Cavalieri Ducati; founded Societa Scientifica Radio Brevetti Ducati in Bologna to produce vacuum tubes, condensers and other radio components.

At the small Turinese firm SIATA (Societa Italiana per Applicazioni Tecniche Auto-Aviatorie), Aldo Farinelli began developing a small pushrod engine for mounting on bicycles. Barely a month after the official liberation of Italy in 1944, SIATA announced its intention to sell this engine, called the "Cucciolo" (Italian for "puppy"). The first Cucciolos were available alone, to be mounted on standard bicycles, by the buyer; however, businessmen soon bought the little engines in quantity, and offered complete motorized-bicycle units for sale.

So in 1950, in collaboration with SIATA, the Ducati firm finally offered its own Cucciolo-based motorcycle. This first Ducati motorcycle was a 48 cc bike weighing 98 lb (44 kg) with a top speed of 40 mph (64 km/h) had a 15 mm carburetor giving just under 200 mpg-US (1.2 L/100 km; 240 mpg-imp). Ducati soon dropped the Cucciolo name in favor of "55M" and "65TL". The chief designer of most Ducati motorcycles in the 1950s was Fabio Taglioni

In 1952 Ducati introduced 65TS cycle and Cruiser (a four-stroke motor scooter).

In 1953, management split the company into two separate entities, Ducati Meccanica SpA and Ducati Elettronica, in acknowledgment of its diverging motorcycle and electronics product lines.

In the 1960s, Ducati earned its place in motorcycling history by producing the fastest 250 cc road bike then available, the Mach 1.

In the 1970s Ducati began producing large-displacement V-twin motorcycles and in 1973, released a V-twin with the trademarked desmodromic valve design.

In 1973, Ducati commemorated its 1972 win at the Imola 200 with the production model green frame Ducati 750 SuperSport.

In 1993 Monster model appeared, a bike with exposed trellis and engine. It makes about half of all sales.

Ducati is best known for high performance motorcycles characterized by large capacity four-stroke, 90° V-twin engines, featuring a desmodromic valve design. Ducati refers to this configuration as L-twin because one cylinder is vertical while the other is horizontal, making it look like a letter "L". Modern Ducatis remain among the dominant performance motorcycles available today partly because of the desmodromic valve design, which is nearing its 50th year of use.

While most other manufacturers utilize wet clutches (with the spinning parts bathed in oil) Ducati previously used multiplate dry clutches in many of their motorcycles. The dry clutch eliminates the power loss from oil viscosity drag on the engine even though the engagement may not be as smooth as the oil bath versions but the clutch plates can wear more rapidly. Ducati has converted to wet clutches across their current product lines.

Ducati also extensively uses the Trellis Steel Frame configuration, although Ducati's MotoGP project broke with this tradition by introducing a revolutionary carbon fibre frame for the Ducati Desmosedici GP9.

Moto blog

Carbon Fiber Ducati 999S For Sale

This is defiantly not a good time to sell such a bike but if your interested and you have around $150,000 to burn then head on over to JamesList.com and check it out. The bike weights in at 315 lbs, with 170 hp, has a top speed over 180 mph and goes 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. The Ducati was tuned by the famous tuning specialist BeFaster in Hannover, Germany and has way too many additions and upgrades to mention here.

Wesll Quad Prototype

A number of manufacturers have tinkered with various three-wheeled motorcycle applications over the years. Companies like Piaggio, Can-Am, Brudeli and even Harley-Davidson have produced unique trikes with ranging levels of success. The Wesll Corporation is attempting to do one better, literally, as it develops a four-wheeled mechanism that could be applied to many different kinds of bikes.

Motorcycle Riding Creates Bug Art

Being an artist, A.D. Maddox (pictured above) believed that all of the dead bugs accumulated on her leather jacket while riding her motorcycle were going to waste and could lead to an artistic endeavor. Her creative solution?  Slap on a painting to the front of her Ducati and bring her art to another level.

Ducati Multistrada Ready for Serious Update?

This fabed-up image from a French magazine of what a new Ducati Multistrada might look like is more like a fable than fact. If nothing else, the Internet is great for generating entertaining rumors, speculative talk, spewing hearsay, etc, etc. With the exception of chatter on where the next lucky third-world orphan to be assimilated by Brangelina might come from, nothing seems to spread faster than talk of a venerated bike receiving a thorough update.

Top Motorcycle News Stories of 2008

2008 was an interesting year in the world of motorcycles. But the biggest stories of 2008 have left some big questions for 2009. What’s in store for the New Year?

Motorcycle.com Weekly Community Round-up!

Here are a few things going on around the Motorcycle.com Forum Network: Animated Engines plivez, a new member of the Ducati.ms forums (welcome Plivez!) has a website where he animates motorcycle engines in flash. It’s pretty interesting to see the way a Evo and Twin Cam V twin Harley Davidson engine works. He also has up the crazy BMW flat twin R100 motorcycle engine which seems more complicated then an engine should be!

Free Limited Edition Mug from Ducati!

How festive! Ducati North America wants to give you Ducati fans a limited edition cappuccino mug for all that hard work you do on your motorcycle. The mug is to celebrate their 2008 world championship win so I guess everyone is a winner!

More Celebrities on Motorcycles

Tom Cruises on his Confederate Hellcat A man known for his epic enthusiasm (see video after the jump!), now has something he can really get excited about. What would have been a Mission Impossible for millions of other admiring Top Guns, Tommy has made a reality. The Color of Money without a doubt had something to do with Cruise rolling up to a movie premier on this, his new $70,000 Confederate Hellcat.

Motorcycle.com Weekly Community Round-up!

Here are a few things going on around the Motorcycle.com Forum Network: What the heck is this? HomerSaurus of the 1000RR.net forums had a bit of an accident on his Honda and wound up with this extra part leftover after rebuilding his bike. So what the heck is it?

POW! Ducati Desmosedici RR Wallpapers

Each week I’ll be cracking open the galleries of Motorcycle.com and ripping out the best high-quality images of motorcycles. POW! or Picture Of the Week will bring the best photography of Motorcycle.com to you in exclusive desktop wallpapers available only through The Sidecar.