In a piece of inspired editorial finagling, American magazine Cycle World somehow managed to parley the godfather of gonzo with the Ducati press office back in the day, and got yer man hopped up and hopped on a 900 SP for the ride.

Not only that, but the art department managed to convince Ralph Steadman to do the illustration. Steadman was a seasoned pensman and creator of the visual side of the experientially engaged hackery to which Hunter S gave birth.

He was an old mate of Thompson and had filed pics for Rolling Stone Magazine that accompanied many of Thompson’s whacked-out but surprisingly lucid and incisive stories.

Looking at the mainstream motorcycle press these days, we reckon there’s room for a little shake-up. Come on editors: get a bit of gonzoish entertainment and creative illustration in your pages!

We humbly submit, dear reader, that Influx is a little haven of the same…

Read the full story here…

God loves a trier. It could be the motto of the Italian motorcycle industry. They have never let common sense stand in the way of a dream — the audacious dream of developing a production bike that just might make the world genuflect with awe and admiration.

Passion is not exclusively Italian, especially when it comes to motorcycles. But the madness of putting passion before reason helps to explain why plenty of half-baked, half-cocked ideas have led to the Italian bankruptcy courts.

Forget ‘failure is not an option’ and all that codswallop. Italian motorcycle companies have often had business plans as firm as a string of over-cooked spaghetti.

Please don’t think I’m criticizing. In fact, I’m doing the opposite.

I absolutely love the Italians’ delusional, monomaniacal self-belief. Just don’t ask me to sink my meager life savings into the product of their next hare-brained scheme.

Italian brands come and go like the seasons. Some, like salmon, make a huge effort to return to their roots to spawn just to roll over and die at the end of conception.

But, goddamnit, they keep trying – and with an intensity that has at times appeared pathological.

Much of the blame for this insatiable urge to build high performance, high spec production bikes – with equally stratospheric price tags – can be laid at the door of Rimini-based business Bimota.

There was a time when this small firm of former heating and ventilation engineers built the most advanced – and arguably the best – road bike on the planet.

The Bimota SB2 used a Suzuki GS750 engine in a chromoly space-frame garnished with the highest quality components from legendary Italian engineering firms like Brembo, Campagnolo and Ceriani.

It’s worth mentioning that in the exceptional case of their doomed two-stroke 500cc Vdue, Bimota always used third party engine suppliers. Despite the fact that these engine suppliers were often Japanese, Bimota remains as fundamentally Italian as the Colosseum.

The groundbreaking SB2 was wrapped in a swooping fairing that was so ahead of its time it never came into fashion. It was a vision of biking created in 1976 – but as if focused through a lens crafted in the 21st Century.

In 1978 the American magazine Cycle found its performance to be comparable to only one other machine, Suzuki’s RG500 Grand Prix bike (the kind on which Sheene won his world titles).

“If you were a brilliant welder, a superlative mechanic, and an inspired designer, this is what you would aspire to build for yourself,” gushed the editorial.

The man behind this game-changing motorcycle was Massimo Tamburini, perhaps the most lauded of all motorcycle designers.

By the mid-1980s Bimota almost won the World Superbike world title and in the following decade the company were building models that could claim to be amongst the fastest road bikes available – particularly the SB2’s spiritual successor the Suzuki GSX-R1100-powered SB6 (below).

Along the way they would also produce the otherworldly Tesi, which was the first hub-centre-steered production bike. Bimota never lacked ambition, but as trailblazers often are, they were subsequently attacked from all sides. Soon the innovative Bimota machines’ ‘unique selling points’ became as commonplace as belly buttons.

Bimota continue to limp on, but it’s hard to understand how.

Of course, Italy does have a motorcycle industry, and a pretty healthy one at that. MV is back in Italian hands after a short spell of being under Harley-Davidson control and wowing certain sections of the media with their new three-cylinder F3.

Moto-Guzzi and Aprilia are now under the wing of scooter giant Piaggio and both still breathing – and the latter are of course the current World Superbike Champions. But this success doesn’t appear to be leading to a huge sales upswing.

Then there’s Ducati, now the least typically Italian of all Italian bike manufacturers. Pardon? Yes, you heard. And that, I believe, is exactly why they’re successful.

The most telling thing I ever heard in relation to a Ducati was from a friend who owned several. He said when he walked up to his 916 (above) he’d suck his gut in, just as he would in the presence of a woman he wanted to impress.

Up until the 916, designed by Tamburini (yes him again), Ducati were a bit-part player, like Bimota, but less glamorous.

They’d done the groundwork: the 851 and 888 had won World Superbike titles and their then new four-valve, desmodromic, liquid-cooled motors were crucial for the company’s later success — but only the really committed bought them.

Now Ducati arguably occupy the mainstream as firmly as any Japanese bike manufacturer and their global dealerships are as cookie-cut as a fast food franchise.

Ducati were quick to follow the lead of Ferrari and Harley-Davidson and become a brand. Now their name is affixed to all manner of licensed products that they sell in stylish dealerships the world over. And the fans lap it up.

That’s not Italian passion. It’s hard-headed marketing.

Unfortunately, it’s what every bike manufacturer thinks is the way to go.

But I disagree. I miss the quirky dealers who sold Ducatis before it all became corporate. You know, back when, it seemed, Ducati’s plant at Borgo Panigale’s very future teetered on the brink every full moon. Back when Ducati, along with all those other legendary names, epitomized the attitude and modus operandi of Italian motorcycle manufacturers.

What can’t be argued with is Ducati’s current line-up of bikes. There aren’t any freaks or duds.

The ST series of dumpy tourers is a bad memory. The original Multistrada has been trampled over by the new 1200S. Yes, the 1198 is derivative, but it is Ducati’s very essence distilled (and the management still whince when they hear the numbers 999).

The Hypermotard is commendably crackers, but it doesn’t have a tiger’s head on its side panels like the Darmah (above).

Having said that, give me a 2011 Monster 1100S rather than a Paso 907 any day.

But please Ducati – let me have the option of buying your bikes from a shop with as much character as the bikes themselves, not from a kind of McDonald’s with motorcycles.

Moto Guzzi V7 Sport (below)
I first saw one of these long and low stunners basking next to a tent at an early ’90s Bulldog Bash. A churning hit my guts that was unrelated to days of semi-ferral survival on hoof ’n’ eyelid burgers and rough keg bitter. I was in love. Yes, I liked the later Le Mans, but back then Guzzis rumbled beneath my radar. This earlier bike’s all-new chassis and engine mods improved hugely all Guzzis that followed. It’s a 120mph race-bred gem that when released in 1971 was fast, exotic and twice the price of a Honda CB750 Four. A few years after the campsite encounter, I bought one cheap, in bits. We’re still married.

Ducati 900SS
There are rarer versions of the big sporty 1970s Dukes, but this one has always done it for me. Lean and muscular, like a whippet on steroids, it barks a deep bass thud through barely-silenced Conti megaphones that spit trouser-flapping, chest-punching pulses. The stretch to the clip-ons is like assuming the position prior to something unspeakable, but being stretched across that tank as the long-legged torque from the desmo V-twin makes all around you go blur and boom is what riding is all about, isn’t it?

Bimota Tesi 3D
You’ve got to give it to Bimota, for a little firm they’ve got massive, well, let’s say gnocchi. When they debuted a concept of their freaky hub-centre-steered creation at the Milan Show in 1983, it’s argued that it so overshadowed their other models that the punters kept their money in their pockets to await the production version, thus bankrupting the firm. The Rimini factory’s fortunes have since gone up and down like a bride’s nightie, but they’re still there and this latest incarnation of the Tesi, the Ducati 1100-powered 3D, is a weird and beautiful praying mantis in metal. Love it.

MV Agusta Magni 850
When Phil Read won MV’s last 500cc title in 1974, grand prix bikes looked like this. I was nine years old and it had a lasting impact (as did Wendy Johnson showing me her gerbil behind the shed, but I digress). Arturo Magni was MV’s last race boss and when the firm closed in the late ’70s he started creating heavily-modded versions of the slightly disappointing 750S road bikes. Loads of neat features, including a great chassis, the swap to chain drive and those swooping, barely-silenced pipes. Forget the price. I’d have to sell a kidney from every member of my extended family, which might be deemed unethical. I’ll continue to dream.

Aprilia RSV4 Factory

Not a typical choice for me. I’m often left cold by bikes that so humble my abilities I can hardly see the point of them. But the Factory gets my vote for its bogglingly high spec, buttock-clenching performance and yet at a price that, while not cheap, isn’t outrageous given what you get. It’s cramped, loud, ridiculous for the road and probably says something unfortunate about the size of my manhood, but there you go. Oh, and given that Aprilia is part of the Piaggio group, I love that such exotica is essentially funded by sales of humble little scooters.

‘There’ll never be another Carl Fogarty. I don’t think the world wants one. Not for another 20 years at least,’ so says Carl Fogarty. And he’s right, in some respects. I think the world, racing fans at least, would love another Carl Fogarty, but modern sponsors are unlikely to give a character like him a chance now to break through now. They seem to want their riders to be seen, not heard, and Foggy never toed that party line.

Fogarty was one of those fantastic characters who would happily say whatever was on his mind to whoever asked whether they carried a reporter’s pen and pad or TV microphone. And making him even more rare was the fact he wasn’t a gobshite trying to gain ink in lieu of skill. Fogarty could back up every slight, snipe and sarky comment with imperious talent. He was, to use the vernacular, a bad ass.

Hugely talented, Foggy was never a master technician and didn’t do much in the way of fitness training beyond riding a bicycle once a week or going out on a motocross bike twice a month. Still, it didn’t make any difference.

‘I’d feel bad that I wasn’t doing something so I’d make myself go for a jog. The other guys were training like athletes. If I had to train like that to win races I’d have gone and done something else. Luckily I didn’t have to. I was so strong in my head I couldn’t get beaten. If I got tired in a race I’d think to myself “Go faster so you can finish the race quicker and have a rest.”’

And he was good enough to ride around most problems the bike could throw at him. He didn’t need a perfect set-up or the ideal tyre to win. He didn’t win every world title he competed for, but a haul of four World Superbike titles is more than anyone else so far. Critics may also say he only won titles on Ducatis, and it’s true, but he wasn’t the only man riding them.

Fogarty was playground-rude about everyone who came close to challenging him. He named his pet pigs after two of his rivals, and a cockroach he found in a hotel room was christened Colin, the namesake of the then upstart American racer Colin Edwards, and paraded in front of the press. It’s hard to know if Foggy was being naïve or a supreme tactician. Perhaps a bit of both, but his antics split opinions. And his character is still doing that now.

‘I’m happy everyone has an opinion of me,’ Foggy says. ‘It makes me feel like I’ve done something. I’m outspoken, so you’re always going to have people criticizing you or loving you for that.’

I’d rather have one Fogarty than ten ‘I’d just like to thank [insert name of all sponsors here]’ cookie cut, media-trained whelps.

Fogarty had already had more success than most British riders by the time he signed to race for Ducati Corse in World Superbikes (WSB). He’d won a World Endurance championship with Kawasaki, the world F1 TT title and triumphed at the Isle of Man.

‘Winning the TT meant as much as any world championship,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t wait for the TT. I was brought up with it. My father raced there and I didn’t miss a year from being one-year-old till I was 20. I used to cry on the ferry on the way home. As a rider I wanted to win it so bad. When I did the double in 1990 I knew I wanted to go on and achieve things on the short circuits.’

He returned to race at the island in 1992 and set the lap record, narrowly missing the win in a race that has recently been voted the greatest TT of all time, but by then he had moved on. 1992 was the year of his first WSB race win.

While riders have always changed disciplines to find world success, like Kenny Roberts Sr, Lawson, Rainey and Hayden who all progressed from dirt track to superbikes and went on to become GP world championships, Fogarty was the last TT winner to succeed in world championship racing.

At his height he took the WSB series from an also-ran niche championship to global importance. He also did for Ducati what Colin McRae did for Subaru.

Fogarty, and the Ducati 916, elevated WSB in many countries around the world at a time when Mick Doohan’s cold and calculated dominance in 500 GPs was turning off race fans in their droves.

One year 15,000 went to Donington for the Motorcycle Grand Prix, while ten times as many packed into Brands Hatch to watch Foggy and the other British riders his success opened the doors for. Thousands of fans would ride to every race in Europe to watch King Carl and he won more WSB races than anyone else in the series’ 23-year history: 59 to Troy Bayliss’s 52.

He became Mr Superbike, and though he showed incredible talent during one-off wild card GP rides (normally disastrous no-win affairs for riders), sponsor politics kept slamming the door in his face. It’s pointless to wonder ‘what could’ve been?’

Fogarty was driven, but admits ‘I didn’t enjoy winning enough. I could be winning races and not be happy because something wasn’t right. Winning became an obsession. Maybe if I had enjoyed it more I wouldn’t have done what I did.’

He’d have to get used to not winning when he became the figurehead and team principal of the ambitious, but ultimately star-crossed Foggy Petronas Racing project. It was the Malaysian oil giant’s idea to build an exclusive sportsbike and win World Superbikes with the racing version. But they were up against Honda, Ducati and Suzuki. It wasn’t going to happen, and now, five years after the project fizzled-out, another one of this scale or ambition is unlikely to ever be seen again.

There are lots of reasons I love Carl Fogarty and another is he never left England for a tax haven. He rode with the flag of St George on his Dainese leathers and Shark helmet, and backed it up by staying in Lancashire and paying his taxes.

Carl Fogarty, is a one-off, there has been no British rider like him before or since.

Photos Michael Fordham/Influx

Italian bikes have been a long love affair, but fathoming quite why is not an easy task.

The bike part is no great mystery. Dad was a life-long rider and fettler. With the war just ended, he courted mum on a recently de-mobbed Norton 16H, civilianised (which really means ‘painted silver’) in his mum’s Pimlico basement.

Twenty or so years later he was still taking my oldest brother’s T120 Bonneville for quick Sunday blasts along the final 15 miles of a sinuous A30 to Lands End. When I went to big school he would deliver me to the gates on the pillion of a T250 Suzuki.

And you might say that the Italian bit is a no-brainer too. Haven’t they rather obviously made some of the most achingly beautiful bikes of the last 90 years? Delve a little deeper and aren’t they also laced with superb engineering? What is there not to love about a Ducati Darmah or a 900SS from 1979, or indeed any Ducati with one of those gorgeous, knobbly bevel-drive motors – single or twin?

And, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone to look at a Moto Guzzi V7 Sport (1971–1973), the forerunner of the better known Le Mans, and not smile. I do love riding my own Italian twins, but it’s a mistake to overlook the big singles, like the Sport 15, built from 1931 when the Guzzi factory was still young and a real innovator.

And then there’s the many beautiful, jewel-like lightweights. Ducati’s sporting singles are well known and much loved, and rightly so. But that’s just the rather obvious tip of a throbbing iceberg. My 1957 Moto Guzzi Lodola 175cc was made as a commuter bike, and yet it is still blessed with a lovingly designed and punchy OHC motor.

Many Italian lightweights are in fact stylish and inspiring road-legal off-roaders, built for Italy’s popular, ISDT-style regolarita racing. (The closest we have to these events in the UK are the three long distance, 24-hour trials still organised by the Motor-Cycle Club – the Lands End, the Exeter and the Edinburgh. I compete on a two-stroke Laverda; a very rare 250cc 2TR from 1976.)

In 1966 I was seven years old, but I still have no recollection of this country’s “greatest sporting triumph”, nor of the iconic T120 Bonneville ridden at the time by my eldest brother. But close my eyes and I can vividly recall number two brother’s neat little 175cc Gilera, with its tiny race seat and hand-painted eagle’s head emblems on a full fairing. In the workshop awaiting a full restoration I now have a one-seven-five Gilera of my own.

It’s a 1963 Giubileo Extra; quite possibly the same model that my brother’s cafe racer was based on all those years ago. It came to me lifeless, with no spark and no sign of fuel at the carb. Last weekend I rewired the ignition and cleaned the fuel taps of their hard-packed crud. She fired on the first prod and settled into a steady tickover, the beat somehow matching the excited thump of my own heart. It was love. Again.

Moto Simpatico’s Trevor Maggs revives, restores, upgrades and maintains classic Italian motorcycles from his workshop in Cornwall for customers all over the UK. His own bikes have included Ducatis, Gileras and Laverdas, but the factory that has a special place in his heart is Moto Guzzi.

http://www.motosimpatico.com/

Photos by Milagro

A few years ago most dual-purpose bikes were boring devices: too slow to be fun on the road, and too crude and heavy to be much good off it. BMW changed all that with the hugely popular R1200GS, as ridden round the world by Ewan McGregor. But even the GS can’t match the amazing blend of style, speed and versatility that is the Ducati Multistrada 1200S.

Ducati tried to crack the dual-purpose market a few years ago with its original Multistrada, which added some practicality to the Italian factory’s traditional recipe of red-blooded V-twin engine and light, sporty chassis. That Multi was a handy bike but it looked a bit gawky and its 992cc aircooled engine wasn’t particularly powerful.

Not so the completely redesigned Multistrada 1200, which is a much more serious piece of kit. To create this outrageous device Ducati sharpening the styling, bolted in a thunderous, 150bhp liquid-cooled V-twin motor developed from that of the super-sports 1198, and added the most sophisticated electronics package motorcycling has seen.

By pressing a button on the handlebar, the Multi’s rider can toggle between Sport, Touring, Urban and Enduro modes. This instantly changes the bike’s power delivery and level of wheelspin-reducing traction control. On the more expensive Multistrada S (there’s also a cheaper standard model) it also electronically adjusts suspension settings to suit everything from fast road riding to off-road exploration.

It might be a dual-purpose bike, but the Multistrada is a proper Ducati. Despite having wide, raised handlebars that give a comfortably upright riding position, it comes to life with a throaty V-twin bark. When you open the throttle at low speed, the Multi accelerates so hard that its front wheel comes up before you know it. This is no bike for novices but it is addictively entertaining, all the way to a top speed of over 150mph.

Fortunately the beast can be instantly tamed by a press of that button. Selecting Urban or Enduro mode smooths the power delivery, limits maximum output to 100bhp, and softens the S-model’s suspension. Like this the Ducati is responsive and easy to ride; fine for slicing through town traffic. It copes reasonably well on a dirt track, too, though its softened suspension still clonks over potholes, and its Pirelli tyres are very much road biased.

It’s in Touring or Sport mode that the Multistrada excels. Despite being 20bhp less powerful than the 1198, it blends raw power with wonderfully flexible delivery, and very light yet stable handling. It’s also a very versatile machine that has a wide and comfortable dual-seat, comprehensive instrumentation, and a 20-litre tank that’s good for well over 150 miles. That almost matches the R1200GS, and far surpasses Honda’s VFR1200F sports-tourer.

The BMW gives better wind protection and is a more rugged off-roader, but for road use the Ducati is much faster and more fun. The Multistrada S comes either as the Sport, with mudguards and other parts in carbon-fibre; or more usefully as the Touring, with heated grips, panniers and centre-stand. If you want a single motorcycle for commuting, touring, rapid road riding and even the occasional track day or gentle off-road excursion, there’s simply nothing to match it.

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Sometimes, we just want to share some love. This is the case with these images of the beautiful single-cylindered Ducati from 1960 — the Elite 200cc.

Though we wish we could relate what it’s like to blast through the hills of Tuscany onthis pretty little italian Stallion, alas, we haven’t even seen one in the flesh. All we do know that we would love to hear from anyone who has actually had the privilage of ownership.

A TONGUE-TIP TASTE OF CLASSIC BIKING: SAN FRANCISCO STYLE

“The thing is with modern bikes, is they’ve got no soul.” Rob, proprietor of the Ace Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission district, presides over one of the hubs of neo classicism of San Francisco’s biker community. “There’s nothing like a bit of English Iron to get the adrenalin going…” he laughs.

Rob is a twenty five year émigré from Liverpool who cherishes his accent as much as he does his hard won beer and wine license from the city of San Francisco. As he tells me this, he puts another beer down on the bar as another pod of black leather and denim-clad young bucks with sculpted features and a Friday vibe stream into the Ace.

On the walls are a series of homages to classic bike scenarios, Manx vistas, racer portraits, retro oil ads and admonitions to the young and the reckless in the shape of back-to-back loops of On Any Sunday. “ Sure I’ve ridden Jap bikes, owned tons of them. But I keep going back to British machines, as well as the odd Italian. They’ve got something more to them than loads of revs and loads of technology.”

And Rob and the crew at the Ace are just part of a huge movement toward classic European bikes here in San Francisco. But the hipster capital of the world, ubiquitously wired, post ironic and self styled capital of the American left field, is at the vanguard of a global phenomenon that has as much to do with disillusionment as it has to do with a regeneration of fashion sensibility.

Tony is a salesmen at Munroe Motors, on Valencia Street in the Mission, just round the corner from the Ace. “It’s unbelievable how popular Ducatis and Triumphs are becoming these days, “ he tells me as the slanted Californian light glints beautifully off the acreage of European steel lined up deliciously in the Munroe shopfront. “I think that it’s because people realise now that bikes are not only brilliant value and are relatively environmentally friendly, that European they are more craft-oriented and mechanically accessible than super high-tech bikes from Japan.”

But underlying this trend toward getting back to mechanical integrity is an undercurrent of romance, an aesthetic rejection of all things electronic and over-designed. “As soon as I got on a Ducati I knew I’d never go back” Crash tells me. The worryingly monikered twenty eight year old graphic designer (who is also a bike riding instructor part time), and tells me of the beauty of his Ducati Classic Sport S (above).

In a sense the return to the classic in Biking in San Francisco is a nod to the general zeitgeist. While bikers will always be petrolheads at heart, jump on a classically proportioned machine with passionate design and minimalist electronics and you’ll evoke a simpler, less guilt ridden time when getting from A-to B was not only about having as much fun as possible, but was also about hand wrought, hard won expertise. In San Francisco biking parlance, Classic means European, and European means style. In San Francisco, the classics have been well and truly cooled. And what happens in USA happens soon amongst the Eurotrash. Watch this space. And fire up that Triumph.

You’ve got to hand to Ducati. With a race bred heritage second to none and a cool design eye and ethos, they keep on coming out with classics.

This silver metalflaked neo caff-styled special was emanating its stylish presence on the corner of Valencia street down in the funky mission district of San Francisco this morning, and the cool bike twitch caught me again.

As far as we know this beautiful stylist (complete with the amazing sounding, exposed dry clutch) is only available to our American friends.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this sort of classic coolness in mind, I am reminded that last weekend the good people of Ulster hosted a classic road race that rivals the Isle of Man TT in its knee dragging intensity. Unfortunately, though, tragedy struck when the event’s most successful ever competitor, the racing legend Robert Dunlop was killed in a crash in practice.

The Northwest 200 is staged every year round a couple of hundred miles of Irish tarmac and draws about every biker in the island into its maw, as well as a healthy coterie of riders from all over the world.

The event launched at Portrush, which is a buzzy little seaside town on the North coast just up the road from the giant’s causeway. If you weren’t there can catch the highlights of the BBC coverage, including the moving story of the Dunlop family’s celebration of their father’s life by going out and racing hard, just days after their dad’s death.

It’s a timely reminder that the inherent danger encoded in racing machines is at least part of their appeal, especially as Robert’s brother Joey was killed back in 2000 during a race in Estonia (see tribute below) Who after all, wants to live forever?

Click here to view the embedded video.