C Y C L E N E W S • AUGUST 16, 2006
55
This is a quite untiring sportbike to
ride hard and long over fast, open roads,
where you'd expect wind blast to become
a factor. It doesn't - instead, same as its older
sister, the Bimota DB5R is a racy, radical-looking
sporty-style bike that's rational to ride, and easy to
live with. On their lowest setting over the 32mm of
adjustment, the footpegs are pretty high and close to
that lowish seat, but they must be to give the ground
clearance the Bimota offers with the twin-exhaust cans
mounted under the seat. Nothing drags at full lean.
The view ahead from the DB5R cockpit is dominated by
the large round Bimota-faced tach, which just stops short of
being intrusive in the way it's positioned, but doesn't
impede your forward vision when you're flat on the tank.
With a combined digital speedometer, clock, tripmeter and
stopwatch (controlled by a switch forward of the left clip-
on) below it, separated by a row of five lights, including one
for low fuel, this is a hyper-minimalist info center in keeping
with the nature of the bike.
But, as they were on its predecessor, the mirrors are
completely useless. They are far too close to the rider,
wrongly angled and incapable of adjustment, so that any
normal-sized rider can't see anything other than the back
wheel behind them. This should have been fixed by now,
and it does no credit to Bimota's attempt to present itself as
a class act that it hasn't been. Go ahead and cover up the
mirrors on your own bike and see how it affects the way
you ride a sportbike on the street.
Apart from those mirrors, the DB5R is like a musical
instrument that's been closely refined and carefully tuned to
deliver an ideal level of pitch and tone. It's now a very satis-
fying ride whose improved engine performance at last
begins to exploit the outstanding handling of that compos-
ite chassis, which is as effective as it is good looking. Now
the next step must surely be to get more power out of that
air-cooled desmodue engine, while making the result Euro 3
compliant so it'll have a life beyond 2007.
There is a solution at hand. The day before my
impromptu ride on the new Bimota, the first supercharged
Ducati streetbike was launched at the Misano round of the
World Superbike Series - in the form of the Vee Two Super
Squalo produced by Australia's Brook Henry. Henry's next
project is to supercharge a desmodue engine like the one in
the DB5R, with the aim of dialing up in excess of 130 hp, but
with zero throttle lag, no more than an 11-pound weight
penalty, and zero overheating issues.
If Bimota won't do it, Vee Two surely will. So while we
wait for the DB5C - as in, Compressore! - the DB5R makes
an excellent stage-two version of what is a sweet-handling
package with very distinctive looks.
Big Ears got brawny - but he's still pumping muscle.
CN
The DB5R gets a host
of trick upgrades.
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