Akrapovič's Exhaust for the Ducati Panigale V4 Is a Work of Art

This video is a bit of marketing piece (a bit might be putting it lightly), but we can’t help but drool over the exhaust that Akrapovič made for the Ducati Panigale V4 R superbike.

Mixed with a race ECU, the serpentine twists of the Akrapovič pipes help coax 231hp from what used to be a 217hp machine in its stock form.

That is a proper WorldSBK level power figure…all from a street bike. It might be a $40,000 street bike sure, but it still runs on pump gas and comes with a two-year warranty and 7,500-mile service intervals.

Of course, the pipes will cost you $5,300 from your local Ducati dealership, and require upwards of nine hours of install time from your shop’s mechanic.

This in turn means that the installation fee could easily cost you another $1,000 before you are even out the door, which is quite the sum of money, but still cheaper than having to build a proper WSBK-spec V4 superbike.

If you want an alternative, you will have a hard time doing so. Ducati has done a good job of locking down the ECU on the Panigale V4, which makes options from outside of the Ducati Performance catalog less of a turnkey option than they used to be.

By the time you pick a cheaper exhaust from another brand, install a piggyback ECU and do a custom dyno tune, well…you haven’t saved much coin in the process, and there is some debate as to whether you will find peak horsepower north of 230hp.

The superbike game is changing. Gone are the days of cheap exhausts that found endless amounts of horsepower. Gone are the cheap motorcycles that could produce nearly 200hp per liter, from a sub-$20,000 machine.

The new-era superbike has more in common with the current-era super car. Only handfuls will be made, and only a select few will be able to own them, but these bikes will do incredible, incredible things.