The bike is question is not a numbers-matching, original machine. It is, however, a good example of what happens to a true race bike: it changes hands, it gets modified, and if lucky, it survives. This bike is a beautiful survivor. The machine was raced in the UK in its early days, during this period it had an accident sufficiently serious for it to be fitted with a replacement frame, this was a genuine 750SS frame supplied by the Ducati importers without numbers and the frame was stamped up with an ‘out of series’ number inside the * stamps, there is no explanation why this was done. The images of the frame stamping have been confirmed by Ian Falloon as being genuine with regard to the portions outside the * stamps, the numbers were added when the bike was rebuilt, as was the practice with factory supplied replacement frames at the time. Falloon states in an email “Definitely genuine frames were available as spare parts without a serial number. I have seen them in the distributor warehouse in the late 1970s. But this 757506 number is not correct for any 750 Ducati, and the font stamp is incorrect too. Someone has stamped this incorrectly. It doesn’t make the bike a fake, but unfortunately it doesn’t ensure its authenticity either.” In summation, the machine is an genuine example, but the frame has been replaced. The original owner of the bike is unknown, but it was sold by Verralls, a well reputed and established London business, to a French customer. This man had the bike for a number of years before passing it on to another French collector who had the bike professionally restored by Patrick Godet of Egli Vincent fame, as a result the quality of restoration was extremely high. The bike was then sold to an American collector who, despite have seem pictures of both frame and engine number in advance of purchase, after 2 years of ownership, disputed the originality of the machine, because of the frame number discrepancy. The machine was re-purchased from him and sold to its current owner in the UK who has not used it since its purchase in 2011. The machine would be capable of being raced or paraded, or merely put into a collection. It is not road registered. The machine is not a fully ‘catalogue specification’ machine, and there is no attempt to claim that it is, but it is a very nice and genuine machine, totally representative of its era, it had a hard life, but is now back to good health. Go to TGA.CO.UK Ltd. for more pictures.
