Ducati Panigale 1199

Ducati has released a series of photos of its revolutionary Panigale 1199 superbike without its clothes on, showing exactly how the bike is held together in the absence of a traditional frame. But while the monocoque chassis is pretty fascinating to look at in the flesh, what strikes us most is just how incredibly compact the bike is - every component has been squeezed into the tiniest possible space. In fact, you can't even see clean through the bike at any point until you reach the rear hugger. This is mass centralization and weight shaving taken to a whole new level.

The Panigale's monocoque chassis

Gone is the traditional Ducati trellis frame that usually wraps around the engine. The Panigale is famously the first production bike to abandon an ordinary frame altogether. One chunky piece up front joins the main front end headstem bearing races to the top radiator and the front and rear cylinder heads.

A pair of boomerang-shaped supports hold the seat and tail unit up off the engine's rear cylinder, and a similar boomerang shaped mount hangs the swingarm off the crankcase. The rear shock sits slightly beyond horizontal, attached to the side of the rear cylinder. The engine doesn't sit in a frame; the engine more or less *is* the frame.

The lack of space

You'd have trouble fitting a credit card into any spot on the 1199. Look at the exhaust tubing, there's barely a cubic centimeter to spare. The top portion of the chassis also houses the airbox. The traditional Ducati L-twin has been angled back 6 degrees to let the front wheel fit in front of the radiators.

The subframe

The Panigale's subframe and seat unit look absolutely tiny with the fairings off, but it's worth noting that the boomerang brackets that hold the subframe to the cylinder and crankcase seem to be designed to allow access to the rear cylinder head. It's unclear from the photos where the battery box sits, but it looks as though simply removing the tank and seat unit will get you through to the top end for those fiddly desmodromic valve adjustments. Good luck with the front cylinder though - that's a radiator-off job. Which means tank off, side fairings off, overflow bottle off, and you'll also have to remove the plastic doodad that bolts to the top fairings on the left hand side. Servicing the Panigale will be a bit of a mission.

Heat dispersion

One of the biggest problems that arises when you pack a lot of engine into a tiny amount of space is that there's very little airflow over the surface of each component to keep temperature in check.

The Panigale seems to have more or less surrendered to this fact - the ultra-compact design seems almost to shield the cylinders from any cooling airflow they might receive. And there's going to be heat - a lot of it. Remember, that 1199cc engine develops a whopping 195 horsepower at 14,200 rpm - a ludicrously high rev limit for a twin. It's the very definition of high performance. So here's hoping the engineers at Ducati have found a better heat management solution than the potato-baking Aprilia RSV4 ships with.

What about a streetfighter?

Whenever a new sportsbike hits the market, nakedbike fans like me start dribbling over the prospect of another high performance, balls-out streetbike with road-focused ergonomics and less nancy plastic covering up the sexy metal underneath.

But while the Panigale is certain to spawn some sort of nakedbike, maybe a Streetfighter 1199, it's hard to see how Ducati will get around the fact that this bike is … kind of ugly with its clothes off. The lack of a frame takes away one of the key design elements when you're looking at nakedbikes, and the engine area is so visually cluttered with componentry that you lose the aesthetic effect of a dirty big engine swinging in the breeze as well.

The best I can imagine Ducati coming up with is some sort of semi-faired street version - probably with even more plastic on it than the Tuono V4. I can't see the streetfighter crowd getting too excited about this layout - it's all function and no form. Then again, perhaps I underestimate their ingenuity. We'll have to wait and see.

Read more »

Audi buys Ducati

Audi has purchased Ducati Motorcycles. Not Volkswagen Group (Audi's parent) , but Audi, which is a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group. It seems a very good fit. It's early days and the announcement has just been made, but as a fan of motorcycles in general and Ducati in particular, we're all running around here like a rats with a gold tooth in reaction to the announcement. Audi has the enthusiast spirit in its DNA to appreciate the magic of the Ducati Brand and empower it. It will ensure the resources are there to enable the knowledge to grow and the brand to prosper.

The transaction will be completed as quickly as possible once authorized by the competition authorities. The Supervisory Boards of AUDI AG and Volkswagen AG approved the acquisition today in Hamburg.

The press release contuinues: "Ducati is known worldwide as a leading brand in motorcycle manufacture, with outstanding expertise in engine development and lightweight construction. Alongside the traditional Italian brands Lamborghini and Italdesign, Ducati is now a third pillar for AUDI AG in Northern Italy. Another building block in the Company’s growth strategy thus falls into place.

"Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG, declared: “Ducati is known worldwide as a premium brand among motorcycle manufacturers and has a long tradition of building sporty motorcycles. It has great expertise in high-performance engines and lightweight construction, and is one of the world’s most profitable motorcycle manufacturers. That makes Ducati an excellent fit for Audi.”

"The progressive control systems and special combustion chamber process of Ducati engines, their resulting sporty character, and Ducati’s extensive know-how in lightweight construction thus offer great potential for AUDI AG and the Volkswagen Group.

"Peter Mosch, Chairman of the General Works Council of AUDI AG, explains that the employee representatives of AUDI AG support the Company’s sustainable, codetermined growth strategy. “We must use the opportunities offered by globalisation for Audi – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Everyone at Audi is looking forward to working with our new colleagues from Ducati,” commented Mosch.

"Ducati is a globally active company and has manufacturing operations at its headquarters in Bologna and at its own factory in Thailand. It maintains a series of importer companies in strategic markets. Experts predict that the motorcycle market will enjoy strong growth over the next few years, especially in Asia. In 2011, Ducati sold around 42,000 motorcycles and generated revenue of some €480 million, employing around 1,100 people.

"Ducati was founded by Adriano and Marcello Ducati in Bologna in 1926. Known originally as Società Scientifica Radiobrevetti Ducati, it initially built parts for radios. It ventured into the manufacture of motorcycles in 1949.

"Ducati has been actively involved in motorcycle racing for many decades through its racing division Ducati Corse. Its racing activities are currently focused on the Ducati official factory team in the MotoGP class of the Motorcycle World Championship and in the Superbike World Championship, supporting competitive private teams. Ducati won the manufacturers’ championship in this latter class 17 times in 21 championships and the pilots’ 14 times."

Read more »

Ducati v-twin to go under the hammer

Just 40 years ago, Ducati was known for its outdated desmodromic singles and little else. On April 23, 1972, Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari debuted Ducati's new desmodromic 750 v-twin with a 1-2 victory at the Imola 200 Mile Race.

They beat Giacomo Agostini's MV Agusta, plus the best that Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Triumph, BSA, Laverda and Moto Guzzi could offer.

The famous victory set Ducati on a course that saw its big desmo V-twins dominating superbike racing for four decades. The official factory reserve bike from that day is coming up for auction, with bidding expected to finish beyond EUR150,000.

This is a significant example of the first of a new breed of Ducati and its desmodromic valve system.

Horsepower has a direct relationship with the revolutions per minute that an engine can turn. There are many factors which conspire to limit the rpm an engine can reliably achieve, but valve gear has had the greatest influence over the last century.

The inlet and exhaust valves in an internal combustion engine are usually opened mechanically, and closed with a spring. Springs worked well at low and medium rpm, but at high revolutions, the spring has trouble pushing the valve down fast enough.

Hence the desmodromic system, which mechanically closes the valve, was tried by many companies with varying degrees of success in numerous racing cars from the 1920s onwards.

The most famous vehicle to have ever used this system, which both opens and closes the inlet and exhaust valves mechanically, was the Mercedes Benz Silver Arrow which won two world Formula One championships and countless other races in the hands of the likes of Fangio and Stirling Moss.

As with Formula One racing these days, top flight car racing was a testbed of some remarkable future technologies and the V8 W196 which debuted in 1954 featured desmodromic valve gear and fuel injection.

The car's 100 mph average at the Mille Miglia (held on public roads in Italy in ) is still one of motorsport's favorite bedtime stories.

Enzo Ferrari, whose cars were being beaten by the Silver Arrows, is reported to have discussed the advantages of demodromic valve gear at length with Ducati's designer Fabio Taglioni during the mid-fifties, and it's hence not surprising that Taglioni decided to give the system a try in Ducati's 125 single cylinder racing engines.

The engines were fast, and they could rev several thousand rpm faster than their counterparts but they were brittle. In the late fifties Ducati desmodromic singles won four Grands Prix - three in 1957 when the bike could easily have won the 125 title, and once in 1958, in the hands of an up-and-coming British rider named Mike Hailwood.

In the subsequent few years the multi-cylinder 125cc race machinery of MV Agusta and Honda rendered the 125cc single uncompetitive of paved race tracks and the project was shelved. Ducati's Fabio Taglioni learned a lot about metallurgy and even more about the reliability and perfromance of the desmodromic system though the continued production of Ducati's road bikes.

He also knew for certain by then that the mechanical valve system enabled the desmo motor to rev far harder than engines with conventional valve trains, which were limited in their ability to rev by valve bounce (the springs could not close the valves fast enough).

There's a downloadable PDF booklet (9.3 MB) on the Ducati website which plots the history of Doctor Taglioni and the evolution of the Ducati desmodromic valve system and its racing bikes and it's well worth a read - on the cover of the book is Taglioni with Smart and Spaggiari. This was Taglioni's finest moment, and despite more than 50 world titles, probably Ducati's finest as well.

The bike to be auctioned is identical in ever way to the bikes which went one-two that day, and had there been reliability issues with any of the works machines, this bike would have been substituted.

It is being auctioned as part of the disbursement of the Saltarelli Ducati Collection which represents one of the largest private collections of Ducati motorcycles ever to be offered at auction.

Spanning the marque's full history from road to racing machines, the 100-bike collection was carefully selected over the past 30 years by lifelong enthusiast Carlo Saltarelli, an ex-Ducati factory test rider, racer and owner of a Ducati dealership.

The catalogue describes the bike as an "immensely-desirable works 1972 Ducati 750SS 200 Miles Imola Racer" - it is actually also the first Ducati v-twin as we know it.

There had been a 500cc v-twin race bike used the previous year, but this was one of the original eight Ducati 750s prepared for the first race - it produces 80 bhp (60 kW) at 8,500 rpm. This bike would undoubtedly have felt the hands of Taglioni himself. Which makes the estimated price of EUR150,000 to EUR200,000 seem extraordinarily cheap. It will be offered without a reserve price on May 11 next year by RM auctions.

Read more »

Ducati 1199 Panigale Most Beautiful Bike

Ducati unveiled its latest superbike, the 1199 Panigale at the EICMA 69th International Motorcycle Show in Milan, Italy. The Ducati 1199 Panigale has been awarded the title “Most Beautiful Bike of Show” by receiving 53.4% votes given by 13,800 visitors. The bike won by a large margin with the MV Agusta F3 coming in second with just 17% votes and the Husqvarna Nuda 900R coming in third with 3% votes. The 1199 has bee designed and built in Borgo Panigale, Bologna and has the most powerful twin-cylinder production engine on the planet with an innovative monocoque chassis to deliver 195 hp of power from a 164 kg body.

With such a powerful engine, the Ducati 1199 Panigale has the highest power-to-weight and torque-to-weight ratios for a production motorcycle in the world. The bike is fully loaded with tech including ABS system, Ducati Traction Control (DTC), Ducati Electronic Suspension (DES), Ducati Quick-Shift (DQS), Ducati’s new race-derived Engine Brake Control (EBC) and Ride-by-Wire (RbW). The Italian automaker has launched three versions of its latest – 1199 Panigale, 1199 Panigale S and flagship 1199 Panigale S Tricolore.

Read more »