VOLUME 56 ISSUE 36 SEPTEMBER 10, 2019 P83
The growing popularity of 1980s super-
bike competition around the globe was
something Castiglioni wanted a piece of
and necessitated a new four-valve Ducati
cylinder head design, beginning life as
the OTV (Otto Valvole Desmo/Eight Valve
Desmo) and later christened the Des-
moquattro. Its creation was entrusted
to a young Massimo Bordi based on his
four-valve, air-cooled, bevel-drive thesis he
completed 10 years prior at university.
Taglioni was none too impressed with
the young upstart Bordi encroaching on
what he felt was his Desmodromic design
with Bordi's four-valve pattern.
"He [Taglioni] was very negative, and I
think he was jealous. But Claudio Casti-
glioni made the choice," Bordi told Cycle
News contributor Jon Urry. "Mr. Taglioni
knew that the four-valve head was my
thesis, my idea. He was jealous. He even
made a drawing of a desmo two-valve
four-cylinder engine to fight with me. It was
crazy; he was the one who invented the
sports twin, and yet he was against me
wanting to develop it."
Building a four-cylinder motor would
have been out of the question for Ducati at
the time, and by April 1986, work hurriedly
began on a four-valve cylinder head that
made its racing debut five months later in
a tubular steel trellis chassis penned and
(Above) One of the
916's trademarks—
the massive
undertail exhausts.
(Below) Carl Fogarty
and the 916 were
made for each
other. He won all his
four WorldSBK titles
on the 916/996
platform.
