Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

(Opposite page) A sweeter-handling chassis than the DB4's would be tough to find. (Right) Bimota is hoping that the DB4 can help turn its fortunes around after the Vdue debacle. (Below right) The DB4 is a flyweight, thanks to an aluminum chassis weighing just 11 pounds. The extruded alloy swingarm weighs in at 7.7 pounds.. Tognon - but in the meantime, the urgent need for cash flow meant fastforwarding a new product for which there was a knqwn demand, and that's what this long-awaited makeover of French designer Sacha Lakic's style-bike sport cruiser, the DB3 Mantra, is all about. On its 1995 launch, the outrageouslooking Ducati-based Mantra represented a conscious step away from Bimota's sportbike heritage, in pursuit of a wider product range for the small manufacturer. The fact that 454 Mantras have been built and sold since then (and it has just restarted production in slightly revised form, alongside the DB4) shows that the concept found favor, but at the same time it seemed an awful waste of Marconi's beautiful oval-section space-frame chassis not to make a proper sportbike out of it, especially as the Mantra frame duplicated the chassis geometry of the good-handling steel-framed DB2. Well, four years later (and with Marconi long gone to Aprilia), that's what's finall y ha ppened, and the DB4 is the result. Was it worth waiting for? Read on.. In developing the new 900 Supersport (a.k.a. 90055) designed by Pierre Terblanche and launched a year ago, Ducati's American-appointed management focused on crea ting a ·product combining two disparate themes: ancient and modern. The dramatic-looking result saw an updated, fuel-injected version of the neoclassic des mod ue Vtwin motor, housed in an improved version of Ducati's traditional steel space frame, all clad in leading-edge styling to deliver a modern, design-led product. Ain1ed at expanding Ducati's desl1lodue customer ls>ase in pursuit of numbers beyond the traditional enthusiast market for such bikes, and to target new buyers who had never bought Ducati before and didn't want (need?) or couldn't afford a 916, this made commercial sense on paper and may well be doing so in terms of actual sales. But you only need to talk to a crosssection of Ducati's traditional desmodue customers at an Owners Club rally or an evening "desmo. do:' and you'll find the new 90055 gets· the thumbs-down. See, they wanted an evolutionary version of the Pantah family of carbureted twovalvers - one they can tune up and personalize themselves, according to taste and budget. Instead they got a fuel- injected designer bike with locked-in engine mapping that doesn't allow home tuning, except via the Ducati Performance catalog, to a level and at a price that the factory predetermines. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, I guess; conventional wisdom says it's good business, just not what a significant number of hardened ducalisli appear to be looking for. Well, with the DB4, maybe instead it's Bimota that is giving them what they want. For the overriding feeling you are left with after . two days of sport-riding the new Bimota in warm winter sunshine through the hills and highways of centralltaly is that this is a bike Ducati would have been proud to have made in its days as a truly Italian company, before the TPG takeover made it think Wall Street's way. Single-minded, hard-edged and uncompromisingly sporting, the DB4 is a desmodue in the old mold, the modern expression of the belt-driven single-cam desmo lineup that dates back to Taglioni's creation of the Pantah family more than 20 years ago. Indeed, the best compliment I can pay the DB4 is to say that Dr. T would surely have been proud to have produced it himself: It's his kind of bike; and at 26 million lire (around $16,000) on the road in Italy, against the 900 Supersport's 20 million lire, for a hand-built, alloy-framed, limited-edition product of which just 350 examples will be built in the 1999 model year, it's pretty well-priced - especially by Bimota standards. Just as the OBI bailed out Bimota 15 years ago (and, in doing so, outdid Ducati's own equivalent product, the 750F1), so the DB4 has a shot at doing the same this time around. And just as the OBI achieved cult status amorig discerning ducalisli, so perhaps the DB4 stands a good chance of similar approval. Not if you look at it strictly in performance terms as delivered, though - for in terms of top speed, the DB4 is rather surprisingly a bit of a stone. To produce the bike, Bimota employed the latest version of the same air/ oil-cooled desmodue engine as was used in the Mantra and DB2, fitted with 38= Mikuni carbs rather than the EFI of Ducati's new 90055. While Bimota claims 80 bhp at the rear wheel at 7000 rpm from this engine, the fact that this is exactly what Ducati also says its fuel-injected 900 Supersport delivers makes me suspicious. In DB2 guise, this very same motor delivered just 74 bhp at the wheel - same as today's similarly carbureted 900 Monster version does - and, nice as the rawedged note tha t issues from the doublestack Mantra-inspired Termignoni silencers is, I don't think this fruitysounding exhaust system feels like it's yielding an extra six horsepower over its predecessor, nor the same level of performance at high rpm as the fuel-injected Ducati. The payoff, however, comes in the DB4's meaty midrange. From 4500 rpm, there's pretty vivid pickup, which, coupled with a dry weight of just 363 15

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