By
ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS BY KYOICHI NAKAMURA
Y t's exactly 10 years since Cagiva's
db Argentinean progettista, Miguel
Galluzzi, invented Monster mania with
the desmodue-engined M900, which
entered production under the Ducati
badge in April, 1993, and, in creating
its very own market segment, has
since spawned 130,000 subsequent
examples of the Monster range. Now,
Ducati has at last produced the ultimate mega-Monster, a genuine
Superbike sportrod in the form of the
Monster S4R, powered by the same
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JULY 30,2003'
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996cc desmoquattro motor that took
Carl Fogarty to the last of his four
World Superbike titles in 1999.
In doing so, however, Ducati has
opted not to follow in the tire tracks
of its NCR performance brethren in
concocting a stripped-out Superbike
by simply denuding its 996 desmoquattro sportbike of its fairing, in
order to provide a potent answer to
its Aprilia rival's acclaimed Tuono
sportrod. For that's just the route
Aprilia took in creating the Tuono
family, complete with the same aluminum frame and chassis hardware
as its RSV-R Superbike range, but
n
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minus the fairing - a path later emulated by NCR in conjunction with
Poggipolini in contriving a Naked
desmoquattro out of the ex-Gregorio
Lavilla 996 Superbike racer, then making customer copies of the resultant
streetrod-with-attitude. Instead, the
S4R is recognizably similar to other
members of the Monster family - just
a lot more potent.
This means that the 996cc S4R
adopts the same basic styling and
Brembo-built tubular steel spaceframe - itself a slightly modified version of the ST4 sports tourer chassis as the previous 916cc Monster S4
which, powered by the softer, lowerperformance ST4 motor, has now
been discarded from the Ducati
range. But, as part of the stated focus
of the R&D team led by project engineer Giulio Malagoli on the S4R's performance, handling and aesthetics,
this is now matched to a tubular aluminum single-sided swingarm derived
from that of the MH900e project bike,
which at 4.3kg (about 9.5 pounds)
weighs the same as the conventional
twin-sided design featured on the S4.
This not only looks good and allows a
better view of the S4R's rear fivespoke Marchesini wheel, but also pro-
