Making its debut at the 2011 EICMA show, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard is the boutique Italian motorcycle firm’s latest creation. Borrowing from the Bimota DB6’s frame design, the DB 10 Bimotard takes the same 1,078cc air-cooled two-valve Hypermotard 1100 EVO motor, with its 95hp peak power output, and builds around this platform a compelling maxi-motard design. Perhaps better labelled as Bimota’s take on building a better Hypermotard, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard also promises the usual Bimota design and exclusivity, and helps bridge the gap to the Italian company’s latest off-road offerings, which are amazingly less-compelling, vanilla, and not going to grace the pages of A&R.
Carbon fiber, Marzocchi suspension, Marchesini wheels, Brembo brakes, and Zard exhaust…all the usual suspects are present on this cleverly portmanteau-named Bimotard. The fit and finish in person is what you’d expect from Bimota: flawless. A part of me says that you have to praise the small Italian company for breaking from its recent tradition of glorified street-naked motorcycles a bit, and offering a motorcycle with a slightly different ethos. That being said, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard isn’t really that huge of a departure from the DB5, DB6, and DB8s that came before it. A Bimota DB6 with different clothes on, the DB10 is really more evolution than revolution, but it still manages to please us…just not wow us. No price yet, but “cheap” is a four-letter word here.
Leaving the Ducati lump relatively unchanged, sans some cosmetic pieces, the Bimota DB10 drops 8 lbs off the Ducati Hypermotard 1100 EVO’s bulk, making for a 168kg (370 lbs) dry weight motorcycles. Adding an extra liter of fuel to the hypermotard equation, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard has a 3.56 gallon fuel tank which should please the more road-warrior orientated motard riders. Lastly, in what will surely please the vertically-challenged riders in the crowd, the Bimotard’s seat is a whole inch shorter than the Hypermotard’s, with a seat height of 820mm (32.3 inches).
Photos: Jensen Beeler / Asphalt & Rubber – Creative Commons – Attribution 3.0
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