Last month, we brought you a photo of what we believed to the new Ducati Hypermotard 848. There was a bit of chatter after the photo hit the internets, as some believed the bike to be akin to the Multistrada line. While the telemetry rack on the bike of the machine, and its side-mounted GP-style exhaust followed the design ethos of the Multistrada 1200, the bike’s seat, mud gaurd, and overall aesthetic were reminiscent of the current Hypermotard.
Seemingly confirming our suspicions, these photos of the likely 2013 Ducati Hypermotard 848 add further credence to our Hypermotard line of reasoning — especially with the front of the motorcycle being seen more clearly. Expected to have a detuned lump from the Ducati Superbike 848 EVO, photos of the liquid-cooled middleweight create more questions about the machine than they do answers.
There seems ample evidence to believe that Ducati is set to revamp the entire Hypermotard line, or at least consolidate it down to a single model. Radically changing the design of one bike in the model, especially when it is not the top-range model, lends itself to the belief that a reworking of the bike’s lines is set to be unveiled later this year.
The real coup de grâce though is the inclusion of a water-cooler motor to the previously air-cooled model, which likely would not be able to co-exist with any of the air-cooled Hypermotard models.
With the clock ticking on air-cooled bikes in general, Ducati has slowly be phasing out its DS models — favoring instead to use variations of its water-cooler superbike motor. Expected to be the case here, what will be interesting is to see how Ducati positions the new Hypermotard 848 against its current line.
One possible explanation is that Ducati intends to keep its very popular Multistrada line-up as is, while the decisively less-popular Hypermotard line will consolidate into a single model, and serve as the smaller-displacement option to the MTS1200, with a more street-savvy mantra. This of course runs afoul of the new Ducati Streetfighter 848, which makes the whole concept very interesting in a “I can’t wait to see this train wreck” sense of the word.
Source: Ducati.ms
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