WORDS: DANGEROUS
IMAGES: CHAPPO
One bike that defies the need for botox or wrinkle creams is Ducati’s iconic 916. Hitting the market in 1994, it’s proven itself to be better ageing than Dorian Grey and even more desirable. So what makes this tubular framed, v-twin the lustered lovely that it is? On paper, its credentials aren’t all that impressive, and with a quarter century’s worth of horror tales to tout around, covering everything from engine blow-ups to electronics so unreliable they make politicians seem dependable, the Ducati’s reliability hasn’t exactly done it many favours either. But madly enough, folk like you and I are happily paying everinflating lumps of money to own one. How come? Surely it’s a looks thing, right? There are only so many times I can write the word ‘iconic’ in this piece without getting lynched, but the 916 epitomises that word, effortlessly encompassing Italian beauty with what was, in it’s day, a beast of a motor. If someone told you their litre sportsbike made 112bhp nowadays, you’d tell them to put the other two spark plugs back in, but that figure was a worthy measure at a time when Oasis were too young to shave and our very own Frodo was still jangling around in his dad’s nether region. Things change, but there’s something endearing about the liquidcooled Desmo’s humble output, that simultaneously boasted pioneering fuel injection and a dry clutch so noisy it could make a coffee grinder seem quiet.