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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128212
The fatal flaw: It wasn't the underdamped rear suspension (left! or the weak brakes that ruined the Apollo's success - HarleyDavidson had no rear suspension, and its brakes were no better. Instead, It was the poorly designed Goodyear tires, which simply could not stand up to the power of the big V4 engine. In several tests, the Apollo shed its rear tread, hastening the bike's demise before it ever went into production. cylinders, and with specially developed Ceriani suspension, the Apollo's handling was certain to outperform Harley, who had only recently discovered rear suspension, though the fullwidth 220mm single-leading shoe brakes front and rear didn't promise as much. A kickstart was prOVided for the brave to use, while for mere mortals a Marelli electric starter similar to the one used on a Fiat TVII00 car was also featured. A massive 200watt generator was fitted on the right, opposite the seven-plate oil-bath clutch, in order to cope with the additional load imposed by various police paraphernalia such as sirens, lights and radios. Relatively compact in spite of its architecture at just 18 inches wide, the all-alloy V4 engine allowed the Italian bike to compare favorably with its Harley rival, scaling 596.2 pounds dry with a 62.2-inch wheelbase, against the American V-twin's inchlonger stance and 640-pound weight. So, even though Ducati test rider Franco Farne came back from an early test run aboard the Apollo complaining that, "It handles like a truck," this was strictly The American Way, and the "Ducati Berliner 1260 Apollo," as the bike was officially known, made up for this with its straight-line performance, delivering a claimed 100 bhp at 7000 rpm (against 55 bhp for the Harley Wide Glide). running on four 32mm Dell'Orto 55 carbs and 10: 1 compression and good for a top speed in excess of more than 120 mph. Pretty impressive for the day as befitted what was in prototype form the largest capacity and most powerful motorcycle yet constructed in postwar Europe. But this was also damning, for its meaty performance was also the Apollo's downfall, a fact confirmed by Ducati tester and former GP mechanic Giancarlo "Fuzzi" Ubrenti, who was the first to suffer the heart-stopping experience of having the specially made rear 16-inch whitewall Pirelli throw its tread at high speed on the Milan-Bologna autostrada, after ballooning under sustained 100 mph speeds and detaching from the rim. "It's a miracle I never crashed somehow I just wrestled it into submission with the back wheel locked, like a cowboy with a bull. Maybe I should have taken up rodeo!" joked the beefy Fuzzi (who later built his own V4 two-stroke 500cc GP racer) to me some years later. The agreement had called for Ducati to construct two complete prototypes and two spare engines, and the first of these, very evidently a Latin pastiche of an American motorcycle p'ainted in a ritzy metallic gold and complete with huge cowboy saddle fitted with a chrome grab handle the only things missing were the tassels and fringes - was handed over to the Americans in a formal ceremony in March, 1964. High-rise "ape-hanger" handlebars, deeply valanced mudguards, a semi-peanut fuel tank seemingly hijacked from Ducati's 175cc production line, and fat whitewall tires specially built by Pirelli completed the Italian-American styling, whose effect was so heavy (not improved by the fat, car-section tires) that the Apollo looked much bigger and bulkier than it really was. A second prototype built later was displayed at the Daytona Show in Cycle Week, 1965, and looked more tasteful, with leaner mudguards and altered sidecovers and painted in a more discreet black and silver - albeit still with the Wild West seat. However, while initial tests proved the Apollo to have an abundance of power, it was soon discovered that Ubrenti's "tire terror" was not an isolated experience. The V4 engine was too potent for the 16-inch Pirelli tires, even in the softer state of tune developed alongside the so-called 100-bhp "SporL" Ducati and Berliner had always intended that the police Apollo should form the basis of a line of freeway cruisers, which would provide an additional means of recouping the outlay spent on development. The prototype engines therefore had two specifications - the 100 bhp Sport version and a normale alternative employing a softer cam, 8:1 compression and a single 24mm Dell'Orto for each pair of cylinders, front and rear. This produced 80 bhp at 6000 rpm - but still the tire problems persisted and had now spread to America, whence alarming stories came filtering back of test riders nearly killed in high-speed testing on banked ovals and freeway straightaways. The solution was to detune the twin-carb version of the engine yet further, reducing the compression still more to 7: 1 and installing even softer cams. This lowered the power to 65 bhp, still adequate to meet police performance specifications and superior to the Harley, thanks to the V4 Ducati's lighter weight, and it appeared to finally resolve the tire problem. WHAT IT IS ... Mysterious and monolithic, Ducati's cue I • abortive V4 Apollo has always had one big question hanging over it: What's it really like to ride? Because of safety concerns due to the tire problems of 40 years ago, no journalist was ever allowed to test it back then - and until the generosity of Hiroaki Iwashita brought the sole surviving example back into the public domain via his considerate decision to loan it to the factory museum on an extended basis, Ducati's dinosaur was a two-wheeled fossil, set in stone. Now, thanks to the hard work of former Ducati Corse race mechanic Giuliano Pedretti and his colleagues, who carefully restored the sole surviving as-found example into running condition last year, I can supply the answer. Iwashita-san acquired the Daytona showbike, second of the two Apollos built (the whereabouts of the original metallic gold example are unknown, if indeed it still survives) in 1986 from Cincinnati-based DomiRacer Inc., then America's largest vintage parts specialist, whose owner Bob Schanz had acquired the contents of the Berliner warehouse when the company finally closed down two years earlier. Among the many Ducati artifacts was the Apollo prototype, "somewhat neglected and shop-worn, but missing only the original (fuel) tank," according to Schanz in a letter he wrote to me in April 1984, enclosing the documentation for the 1959 Ducati 125cc desmo twin-cylinder GP racer I'd bought from him earlier. "I'll let you know if I get it running, unless you want to buy it from me as is?" Ouch! Talk about a tough choice but, hardened racer as I was (Schanz generously sponsored me in Historic n e _ S • MAV 7, 2003 47