2014 DUCATI DIAVEL
FIRST RIDE
P36
at slow speeds, but asks you to
hang on very tight indeed when
you gas it up hard off a stop light,
or simply give a strong twist of the
wrist exiting a slower turn. Then
there's a crisp but controllable
response that will make you glad
you had Ducati's very effective
TC/traction control available. Be-
cause that's when the specifical-
ly developed fat 240/45-17 rear
Pirelli Diablo Rosso II on its wide
8.0-inch rim digs into the asphalt,
and the Ducati rockets forward in
a way one of the company's Su-
perbikes would have a hard time
matching.
This is fun factor 45 – a guar-
anteed smile-bike that's both
more civilized than before, but
arguably even faster, too, aided
by that stretched wheelbase and
balanced 50/50 percent weight
bias, that combine to counter the
front wheel lifting as you leave
high-performance supercars
trailing in your wake, let alone
anything else with half their num-
ber of wheels.
But as anyone who has ever
ridden one will tell you, the Diavel
is by no means strictly a straight-
line package, that's reluctant to
change direction anytime soon.
It's not one of your normal pow-
ercruisers fitted with raked-out
steering geometry and a massive
rear tire, which then if you insist
on cranking them over in a turn,
suddenly fall on their side into the
apex as you reach the shoulder
of the flat-profile rear rubber. This
is still a Ducati, after all, so not
only does it pick up speed fast,
but in spite of steering geometry
that's rangier than anything else
ever to leave the Bologna factory,
it's improbably agile and easy-
handling.
With that long wheelbase and
a 28-degree rake to the fully ad-
justable Marzocchi 50mm fork
(delivering 4.7 inches of wheel
travel, with copious amounts of
trail dialed in), you'd expect the
Diavel to be a real handful in
tight corners along city streets or
mountain roads - but it isn't.
Instead, this is a bike you don't
have to fight to get it to steer. Turn-
in is especially great - the Diavel
just tips easily and controllably
into the apex of a turn with rela-
tively minimal effort required, and
holds a line well both at speed
and going slowly, as the well
The Diavel
comes in two
models –
the $17,995
standard
version and
the blingier
Carbon
model.
