Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

TEST SPORT81KE By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyoichi Nakamura new chapter in desmodue sportbiking for Ducati? One look at the new 900 Supersport says it all - and two days spent riding it over all kinds of roads confirm that first impressions are correct. The Italian company hasn't just spruced up its aging 900SS sportbike, either. The model that for so long underpinned desmo V-twin production, but languished beyond its sell-by date for several years - thanks to the lack of development funds under Cagiva ownership - has been made over. Twentyfive years after the first-ever 750SS Vtwin desmo scored its historic one-two victory at Imola first time out, Ducati has reinvented the best-selling sportbike that works racer gave birth to (see sidebar). Taking only 15 months from penning the initial drawing to rolling the first example of a new model off the assembly line is a nanosecond in street-bike production terms, even if you're working from an existing engine package. Yet that's how little time the first mainstream Ducati to be produced by the company's new design director, Pierre Terblanche, has taken to bring to market. It arrives complete with distinctive "Red Arrow" motif for the face of the bike, with a black stripe that bisects the nose of the fairing, swooping down from the pointy screen to the arrow-shaped headlamp shroud, to create a bike that Terblanche says "represents the essence of Ducati functionality and style." The fact that he started work on the bike within weeks of TPG's takeover of the Italian bike company - producing the first prototype offshore in a Birmingham, England, design studio to get over the lack of any in-house facilities in the Bologna factory - indicates the importance that Ducati management places on the 900 Supersport. This is the key new model in TPG's no-compromise rescue plan: It had better be done right - and fast. Well, riding the first new model entirely conceived and developed under TPG management underlines how much added value American ownership is bringing to Ducati's product range - not only in terms of quality of manufacture (feel the depth of that paint, admire the cleaned-up look of the V-twin motor, approve how well all components from fairing panels to mounting brackets are screwed together) and claimed improvements in reliability, but also of design, dynamics and allure. This is indeed a new page in Ducati's "classic sport" two-valve sportbike saga, a fact Ducati is underlining by putting an emphasis on the model's full name, even if most customers will still call it the 900SS. The new fuel-injected 900 Supersport represents a serious option by any standards to its TRX850/VTRI000/TLI000S Japanese V-twin rivals that have left hundreds of examples of the old neoclassic 900SS with grass growing under their wheels in dealerships around the world. And you don't need to be a trico/ore-blooded ducatista to appreciate that. This is the first desmodue SJ50rtbike of the modern era that measures up on equal terms against the best of the rest, slotting perfectly into Ducati's range for the next millenium, between the ST2 sport tourer and the 748/916 otto va/vole street racers. There is practically no comparison between the old slab-sided, carbureted 900SS dating from 1991 and the voluptuous new fuel-injected Supersport, beyond the fact they share the same essen tial air 1oil-cooled two-valve engine package. Simply throwing a leg over the new one tells you how much it has changed. South African-born designer Terblanche, 42, who used to work for Cagiva in Varese, where his portfolioj included the Ducati Supermono and 1 Cagiva Canyon/Grand Canyon, has headed Ducati's new in-house design. department for the last 15 months. Terblanche recognized the flawed riding, position of the old bike - it left you sit'" ting down too low, with footpegs mis) positioned and a feeling of having to reach up to the clip-ons - and redressecL it. To do so, he has borrowed heavily from his Supermono racer, whichi!!Jhe five seasons I've been racing one has achieved the unlikely feat of allowing a 6-foot rider like me to feel comfortable aboard a slim single with a 53.4-inch wheelbase. Terblanche is simply a master of packaging, and he has transplanted several Supermono design cues to the new Supersport, with the result that the V ~ twin feels like a slightly taller version of the single to sit on. These similar styling cues include not just his signature shape to the fairing and seat, but especially the fuel tank, which allows you to tuck your knees in tight so you feel a part of wl\afl seems in consequence to be a very sIinl bike. And yet the tank still prov·ides a 4.2-gallon fuel load that is adequate for a fuel-injected 904cc twin, compared to the thirstier old carbureted bike's- 4.'6 liters. And the trademark Terblanche

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