Cycle News

Cycle News 2014 Issue 24 June 17

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/330779

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DUCATI 1199 SUPERLEGGERA FIRST RIDE P36 BY ALAN CATHCART PHOTOGRAPHY BY FABRIZIO PORROZZI, MARCO ZAMPONI AND KEL EDGE I t doesn't get much better than this. It's 9 a.m. on a Tuscan spring day with not a cloud in the sky and the air fresh and cool – just right for maximum perfor- mance from the most powerful twin-cylinder production street- bike ever made, a motorcycle with the most aggressive power- to-weight ratio ever for a bike with lights and a license plate. And I'm about to let it rip on one of the world's greatest racetracks, the Ferrari-owned Mugello Grand Prix circuit up in the hills above Florence, Italy with 10 laps in splendid solitude aboard the fin- est motorcycle currently available for purchase from any manufac- turer anywhere in the world. Well, let's qualify that – be- cause if you happened to have the odd Euro 66,000 ($89,500) available to spend on this modern example of two-wheeled Renais- sance art, and weren't sufficiently wise or quick enough on the draw after its launch at the Milan Show to put a deposit down for one of the 500 examples of the Ducati 1199 Superleggera that are being built, you already lost out. All 500 bikes are already spoken for, net- ting the VW/Audi-owned Italian manufacturer a cool Euro 33 mil- lion ($44 million) of extra turnover - as well as untold kudos for pro- ducing what is unquestionably the finest street-legal motorcycle

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