Honest Opinion Of Ducatisti's before you owned a Ducati ?

Educate me, what is a pov ? Andy

 

I would say my opinion of Ducati owners has dropped since I bought one.

 

I never knew or met any in my younger days, ever, anywhere, at any time, at any point, on any road,bike meet or club, nil nada zilch, honest. They were all sat in the garage repairing their bikes whilst I was out on my Yamasuzaki !!

Then I got one, and I never went out cos I was then like them.

Nah only joking, they tended to be middle aged guys who seemed/claimed/might have known a thing or two about bikes and been on them for a few years.

Stuart

 

is that like dogging for a bygone age?

 

there's a documentary channel to do with hamsters or something - they can probably answer your question on there.
something to do with dash cam footage or some shit like that..

 

All the Ducati owners I have met up to now have been sound, I enjoy the company of owners that have older bikes as in general they tend to be the tinkerers. My bikes 21 years old now, I've had it 10 years and its never let me down, on long trips with mates one bmw owner has had to be recovered twice and a Yamaha owner once, both a lot newer bikes than mine yet they still take the piss out of Ducati reliability.

 

My first experience of a Ducati was in a piazza just off Termoli Beach front.

Three converging streets and it was a glorious summer day. I could hear a rumble of thunder and it was getting louder coming from one of these streets.

Moments later what I was later to learn was a 900ss came out of the darkness, and on it was, for the 14 year old sev, an epitome of cool. Jeans, t-shirt, shoes, a helmet over one arm, and a mane of wavy hair and sunglasses. The noise hit you to the core, and the red was impossibly red against the backdrop that was it's natural habitat.

There was a 'rightness' about the whole thing. I seemed that it was as it should be. That image is with me even now, and I always remembered fondly the inspired advertising that was the monochrome Ducati UK advertising campaign in the 90's with the only colour being the bike.

Years later I got a 900ss. Down to box hill I went and as a new rider and a new to Ducati owner I just wanted to mingle and talk bikes.

Unfortunately for me the first people I met was a a brace of Ducati Sporting Cocks who were all on 916sp's and all to a man were a bunch of arrogant self absorbed arseholes. I've touched on this story in several other threads. They looked at you in that way where they're pricing your worth, looking you up and down to see if you're one of the wallet cool kids.
So there was a young sev, standing in the outer orbit like a spare prick at a wedding.
"Don't mind them, they're a bunch of cunts - they're always down here strutting around thinking they're better than everyone else" said a voice behind me.
It was a bloke who looked rough as arseholes, in worn out leathers
He offered to buy me a coffee, and we sat down with his mate, a thoroughly nice chap with a Bimota tesi ES.
He himself had a 916, which was in powerhorse Ducati livery with tyres which were absolutely shredded, and exhaust link pipes that looked like they'd seen the inside of a blast furnace with the amount of heat soak they'd had.
Man could ride - I saw hm roasting several wannabe Dunlops round the carriage way - turns out he was a courier and his normal hack was a shitted up cx500.

To me the DSC were as bad and on parallel to any of the worst Harley owner groups going. Their brand arrogance and financial elitism beyond compare, in fact, probably bordering on motorcycle brand fascism and arianism. I shudder to think just how many people they must have put off if that was the perception of Ducati ownership, and for many years I actually HATED the 916 because of them.

For years I distanced myself from Ducati owners, there was always a space and a chat amongst the jap bike crowd, and even they had their cock contingents as well.


Luckily the few people on this forum Ive met have been light years away from those DSC bellends.
Would I say I like Ducati because they are better than other bikes? no.
Ducati can afford to do certain things a different way because their owners accept that the bike needs a certain level of attention, a preventative maintainance if you will.
The Japanese design their bikes to still function should they be neglected. Even their most extreme bikes today are still designed and built with everyday useable transport in mind. Ducati probably decided that this was not a route they wanted to, or could go - if nothing else, to be true to their values.

I think that as Ducati owners we accept that there is a measure of attention that we need to show our bikes to keep them going - preventative maintenance rather than letting them fail before we address problems.

There was always that knowing division that you were buying something different, and if you were paying the same as your Japanese counterpart you were getting less, but if you paid more, you got a hell of a lot more. Why would anyone in their right mind pay 7.5k for a 900ss when they could have had a blade? the next step up was that 12.5k 888sp5

We've always paid for the privilege, and unfortunately for some that's seemed to induce a sense of entitled elitism.
For me I like the looks and the sound, and I'll talk to anyone that'll listen about them. Would I turn my nose up at another motorcyclist? no.

I think there's far too few of us now to start playing those games, and the thing that makes me happy is when I see some young kiddy on two wheels instead of a car. If the ducati can inspire him to learn to ride then great, but if my old GSX-R11 snotter can do the same so be it.

Back to the original question;
I didn't really notice them. When I did own a Ducati, I thought the 916 crowd were a bunch of wallet and willy waving cock ends.
Then parallel imports came along and more people got onto 916's and 748, diluting the elite cock pool and just filling it with more cocks of a different nature who couldn't understand why you couldn't thrash the shit out of them like your blade, leave it in a field over winter and expect it to start on the button six months later. Not the bike's fault per se, but more the importer who didn't know how to set one up right.

Then you had the UK vs Import owner factions coming to the fore. Funny old world.

And that was the other thing - how good your Ducati was, really did depend on its provenance, and that was nice in a way, as it built a nice dealer/customer relationship from the off.

 

Very nicely put Sev.

 

^ spot on Sev