If you’re attending this year’s World Ducati Week, then you’re in for a treat, as Ducati is set to debut two new bikes at the gathering in Misano.
Details are thin at the moment, but we do know that one of the machines will be a limited-edition motorcycle that celebrates Ducati’s 90th anniversary.
Meanwhile the other bike is a new model to the Ducati range, which will be shown in a “closed room” setting as a sort of sneak peak before its official launch.
As expected from earlier sales reports, Ducati Motor Holding is posting a banner year for 2015. The Italian motorcycle maker says that it sold 54,800 bikes last year, a 9,683 unit (+22%) increase over the number of bikes sold in 2014.
Helping break the 50,000 units barrier, the Ducati Scrambler line accounted for virtually all of Ducati’s sales growth in 2015, with over 16,000 Scrambler models sold worldwide. As we have reported before, this paints an interesting picture of what is going on behind Borgo Panigale’s walls.
“The record sales of 2015 are the result of our company’s courage and skill,” said Claudio Domenicali, CEO of Ducati Motor Holding.
“Ducati closes 2015 with record volumes and also a substantial growth of 22% over 2014. During the year Ducati not only launched successful new motorcycles, but also a new brand, Ducati Scrambler, which immediately won global acclaim with over 16,000 sales worldwide.”
If you’re not listening to the Two Enthusiasts Podcast, you should…there is some good two-wheeled gold in the show. So, with a hat-tip to my co-host Quentin Wilson – whose new favorite phrase is “pinnacle weird” – we present you with perhaps the strangest motorcycle to debut at the 2015 EICMA show.
The Bimota Tesi 3D champions the hub-center steering chassis design, and is one of the more unique motorcycles in the industry right now. Its design is positively futuristic, so it is a little strange that Bimota is trying to make the Tesi 3D into a café racer with the launch of the Bimota Tesi 3D RaceCafe.
Powered by the same 803cc air-cooled v-twin engine that’s found in the Scrambler series, you can tell that Bimota is trying to latch onto the post-heritage trend that is dying a slow death in the motorcycle industry, but hasn’t quite figured out how to do it yet.
The eagerly awaited 2016 Ducati Scrambler Sixty2 is the small-displacement machine we have been waiting for from Ducati, and it has finally dropped at this year’s EICMA show in Milan. The Scrambler Sixty2 joins the Scrambler Flat Track Pro as one of the two new Scrambler Ducati models for 2016.
Accordingly, the Ducati Scrambler Sixty2 takes the basic Scrambler chassis and re-sleeves the machine’s air-cooled v-twin for 400cc of displacement, with a 72mm x 49mm bore and stroke (compared to the 88mm x 66mm bore and stroke on the 803cc models).
The result is a bike that Ducati says is better suited for new riders with its 41hp and 368 lbs dry weight. That’s only a 7 lbs reduction from the the 803cc models, so the Scrambler Sixty2 is still a bit heavy, but the Ducati Scrambler Sixty2 does fit into Europe’s A2 license format, so there’s that.
Ducati Motor Holding is reporting that it has sold over 50,000 units to customers, for the first time ever. This is a substantial improvement over the 40,650 units that Ducati delivered at this time last year, and the 45,100 units the company sold to customers in 2015.
This news is a bit of a red herring though, as the sales increase comes due almost solely because of the addition of the Ducati Scrambler line, which in the first three quarters of the year was at 13,609 units sold.
As we have reported before on Asphalt & Rubber, the sales increase being posted by Ducati is a bit of red herring with the brand. While the Scrambler line has shown strong growth for Ducati, the rest of the model lines have been weak for the year.
Bimota has a number of things to debut at next week’s EICMA show, the biggest being the company’s latest model: the Bimota Tesi 3D RaceCafe.
The concept seems pretty simple, take the hub-center steering design of the Bimota Tesi 3D, and style it to look like the café racer of the future – if that oxymoron makes sense to you.
The above image is the teaser for the Bimota Tesi 3D RaceCafe, which shows a more traditional headlamp on the futuristic machine. Other changes include the use of Ducati’s air-cooled 803cc v-twin engine, which is currently powering the Ducati Scrambler line.
Italian magazine Motociclismo has what it says are the first spy shots of the rumored Ducati Scrambler 400, the small-displacement sibling to the current Ducati Scrambler.
While normally it is easy to distinguish a new motorcycle model when it’s on the street, the photos from Motociclismo offer us little insight into how the Scrambler 400 is different from its 803cc kin. Checkout the photos on Motociclismo.it, and you will see what we mean.
This would suggest that we can expect to see a very familiar looking motorcycle make its debut at EICMA in two weeks’ time, with the most noticeable different being the Scrambler 400’s lack of upside-down forks.
We have been hearing rumors of a smaller displacement Ducati Scrambler since the 803cc machine dropped on us last year. The rumors have varied in detail, with some quoting a v-twin engine, and others saying Ducati might finally bring back a single-cylinder engine to its lineup.
The displacement figure has also varied, with sizes quoted between 300cc and 600cc. In fact, only two things have been constant in the rumors we have heard: that Ducati is working on a smaller Scrambler, and that it would be cheaper than the current $8,500 Scrambler Icon, thus creating a better entry point into the Italian brand.
All of that has been too vague to publish, but there seems to be some clarity now on the new model, with a Ducati Scrambler 400 widely expected to debut in a month’s time in Milan.
With global Ducati sales up 22% in the first six months of the year, it comes with no surprise then that Ducati North America has some sales growth to report as well.
Selling 6,961 motorcycles in the first-half of the year, Ducati North America is up 12% over last year’s same time period. Helping fuel that increase was an incredibly strong June, where 1,981 motorcycles sold — for a 106% growth over June 2014.
Ducati Motor Holdings is happy to report that its 2015 sales are off to a great start: up 22% over the first half of 2014. In total, 32,600 motorcycles have been sold by Ducati since January, the most ever sold by Ducati during that time period.
Ducati is also saying that 9,000 of the machines sold were Scrambler models, making the model the most popular in Ducati’s lineup by a strong margin.
For reference, the sales of the other models are as follow: Multistrada 1200 (4,700), Monster 821 (3,700), 1299 Panigale (3,000), the remaining 12,000 units come from the Diavel, 899 Panigale, Hypermotard, and Monster 1200
Ducati says it grew across all of its sales territories, with the USA still the company’s #1 market, and sporting a 10% growth figure so far this year. The USA didn’t post the biggest numbers though, with following countries showing strong sales growth: Italy (+51%), Spain (+38%), the UK (+36%), Germany (+24%), and France (+23%).
We’ve been big fans of the work done by Holographic Hammer for a long, though we have only curious featured their work once before — and that’s a shame, since the French outfit is making some interesting concepts, both digitally and physically.
We’re therefore happy to share with you their latest work, the Ducati Scrambler “Hero 01”.
Holographic Hammer tells us that they wanted to keep the purpose of the Scrambler at the Hero 01’s core, namely a bike that you actually used on a day-to-day basis. It would get dirty, it would get scratched, it would tip over…therefore a bunch of intricate and expensive kit wouldn’t do.
The changes therefore are practical and affordable, sans maybe the $3,000 carbon fiber Rotobox wheels…after all though, one has to live. Right?