Video: An Intimate Look at the Ducati 1199 Superleggera

The Ducati 1199 Superleggera is finally here, Ducati’s exclusive 500 customers are starting to receive their bikes, and Ducatista around the world are acting like its Christmas in May. We can’t blame them; after all, the Superleggera is a rolling showcase of what the engineers at Borgo Panigale can do with a street-legal machine.

Our friends at Moto Corsa were lucky enough to get three fine specimens in the first wave of deliveries — the Portland, Oregon shop will receive nine Superleggeras in total — a pretty sizable sum when you consider that less than 200 will make their way across the pond to US soil.

Naturally Arun and his cohorts took the opportunity to examine up-close what $200,000 worth of carbon fiber, titanium, and aluminum looks like. Even better, they documented the experience, for our viewing pleasure of course.

We love the opening lines about the Ducati 1199 Superleggera, because it’s so true. It almost seems a shame to have to put the fairings on this motorcycle, because the real jaw-dropping experience comes with the Superleggera sans bodywork, exposing all the effort Ducati’s engineers went to in order to trim the fat off the already svelte Panigale.

If money was no object, we’d take two. One to ride, and another that could sit undressed in a special showroom for us to gawk at while we contemplate life, the universe, and everything. We think that’s how Claudio Domenicali, an engineer himself, would like it…as long as you bring a towel.

Enjoy the video below, and find our up-close photos of the Ducati 1199 SuperLeggera from its 2013 debut at the EICMA show.