+ Click to Enlarge LADY IN RED: Ducati’s 748/916 series is generally held to be the most beautiful motorcycle of its era - some say of all time. Pictures: DAVE ABRAHAMS

September 17, 2001
By Dave Abrahams

How do you test a legend? What can you say about the latest version of a motorcycle that has achieved iconic status worldwide in the six years since its introduction? Well, first you get it stuck in heavy traffic and you find out that it really isn’t a commuter…

After 20 minutes at 55km/h my back was sore and I couldn’t use the front brakes because my hands had gone to sleep. The seat is high, the bars are low and wider than you expect, and your feet are tucked up under your bum. Not funny.

Then you point its razor-sharp nose out on the twisties along the coast south-east of Cape Town and you discover perfection. The crouched seating position is just right for initiating high-speed turns, the low, wide bars give superb steering leverage and your feet are tucked well out of the way, right on the balance point for moving around in the saddle if you want to play Boy Racer.

But first the nuts and bolts:

The 750cc version of Massimo Bordi’s “desmoquattro” liquid-cooled, twin-cam V-twin doesn’t have the booming, lazy-sounding power delivery of the bigger motor but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is an underpowered 916. It has much lighter reciprocating masses and the revs rise and fall like a snake striking, accompanied by a sharp-edged bark from the air box where the twin Marelli 50mm throttle bodies lurk.

Peak power of 71kW is achieved at a spine-tingling 11000rpm and maximum torque, an even more impressive 73Nm, at nine.

It’s way oversquare at 88 x 61.5mm bore and stroke with an 11.5:1 compression ratio. The heads house the famous “desmo” valves that have no springs; they are opened and closed by cams so there is no possibility of bouncing the valves and the characteristic rev-counter with its black face and green lettering has no red line.

This radical motor starts first push on the button every time, idles perfectly smoothly at around 1400rpm, hot or cold, and will tolerate being trundled around in traffic at low revs without misbehaving. That’s the upside of Marelli’s needle-sharp fuel injection. Upsides always have downsides and this one is that it’s as over-sensitive as most spritzer systems at small throttle openings and you need a very educated right hand to avoid proceeding through town like a springbok on heat.

It all comes together out in the twisties. The response from the twistgrip is instantaneous and micrometer-precise; from 4000rpm up there is reasonable torque to pull you out of slow corners. Between six and eight it’s amazingly strong for a seven-fifty, easily out-dragging my partner’s 900 Triumph triple. And then just over nine it goes absolutely mental; you get a distinctive brassy blare from the airbox, the front end gets very light and the bike simply flings itself at the horizon.

The 748 is nobody’s little brother. It’s a rev-happy motor with a hooligan top end, making it in some ways a sharper tool than the full-monty 916. You might make a few more gear-changes but, unless your surname is Fogarty, your progress from A to B over your favourite mountain pass will probably be quicker on the 748.

The motor runs uncannily smoothly. There’s no V-twin throb apart from a little power-thudding at very low revs. There is, however, quite a lot of high-frequency secondary vibration at the top end, just like an old Japanese four. It doesn’t intrude or cause pins and needles; it’s just surprising from a twin.

Mind you, so is11 000rpm.

All this urge is fed through the only multiplate dry clutch in series production. Earlier versions, as on the 996SPS I wrote about two years ago, were embarrassingly grabby but the latest generation from Bologna has the gentlest dry clutch I’ve used. If anything it’s a little vague and lacks the solid hook-up that reassures you when it goes home but it never shows the slightest sign of slipping, even when mildly abused in the Stoplight Grand Prix.

The six-speed, constant-mesh gearbox is the best I have used, period. It’s even better than the hand-lapped and polished cog set on the 1980 Ducati Pantah show bike that until now has been the standard of comparison for slick-shifting transmissions. The gear lever is only about 100mm long and its throw is short, precise and surprisingly light. Going up through the ratios is a joy, especially in combination with the utterly precise throttle action. Forget the clutch, all you do is put your toe under the lever, think a dirty thought and it’s gone through - it’s that good.

I continued to use the clutch for downshifts through the test period out of respect for the healthy dollops of engine braking every time I shut the throttle. Throughout some serious horizon-tilting episodes, when my concentration was firmly on the road, the Ducati never missed a shift; the cut-glass gearbox is a major factor in the equation that makes this the incredible riding machine that it is.

For the record, there is no discernible lash or snatch in the gearbox, final drive or cush rubbers - none. Other manufacturers please note - it can be done.

Massimo Tamburini’s tubular steel trellis frame remains an oddity in an era of alloy spar chassis but one with sound reasoning behind it. Although it’s heftier than the opposition, it’s more rigid and relatively inexpensive to make in short production runs. It also survives crashes well and lends itself readily to small changes in geometry as successful upgrades filter through from the racing department.

Odd, then, that the upper fairing mount, the most vulnerable frame member on any motorcycle in even the gentlest of low-speed spills, is a dinky little alloy casting that can’t be straightened or repaired and costs a bomb to replace. Oh well, that’s Italians for you.

The front end of the latest edition 748 is graced with 43mm Showa upside-downies from Japan, adjustable for everything except colour and contrast. Once set up for my 104kg they were magic; firm but not harsh around town and tracking as if on the proverbial rails through the twisties. At higher speeds their action is impeccable; they tell you about every bump and ripple on the road without making any of them a cause for concern.

The 748 is the only motorcycle I have been able to throw into bumpy corners without worrying about holding the smooth line; just pick the perfect trajectory and lay it in - let the suspension worry about the road. It makes riding the bike really fast both easier and safer.

The rear suspension is firmer because it needs to cope with drivetrain input. It’s a little bumpy at traffic speeds but works well on the open road. The worst behaviour I could induce was a little sideways wiggle caused by clumsy downshifts in mid-corner - the sort of thing that would have killed you on a 1970s musclebike. Its most important feature is the rising-rate progressive linkage that prevents excessive squat under acceleration and lets you to pour on all that glorious urge and use it right to the limits of the rear tyre.

Apart from a larger master cylinder to reduce lever travel, the 748’s Brembo brakes haven’t changed in six years of production. They lack the instant bite of the best from Japan but give the most accurate feedback of any system on the market. You can brake as late and as deep into the turns as your nerve will let you, easing off and re-applying the brakes to change the bike’s attitude as you reach the apex - and you can do that time and time again, accurately and safely. Or you can stop dead with the front tyre howling in protest and the back wheel waving in the air, totally under control. That’s the recurring theme of this machine - precision control.

The rear brake on motorcycles of this order is mostly used to stabilise the tail in the wet and to induce rear-wheel slides on the turn-in to tight corners. I didn’t get that adventurous but I was forced to rely on the rear brakes when my hands went to sleep during the slow earlier part of the test run. Suffice to say that the stubby backwards-facing lever provided enough feel for safe parking-lot manoeuvres, even providing some pretty sharp stopping when a box-bound idiot turned in front of me.

The slab-sided, sharp-edged body panels have are also unchanged since 1994, their single colour and complete absence of cartoon graphics illustrating beyond words that less really is more. The bike is a rolling work of art, a striking tribute to the concept of getting it Absolutely Right. On the outside the fit and finish of the body parts is beyond reproach but the inside of the fairing is a little untidy and there’s a little steel bracket on the steering head that, had it been welded by one of my apprentices, he’d have done it over.

The fascia also lacks cohesion, perhaps borrowing a little too much from the track, but the essential dials - all analogue, thank goodness - tell you exactly what you need to know at a glance. The levers and switches, from the same Italian CEV company that supplies Honda, work smoothly and positively and fall precisely to fingers, which is not always the case with sports machinery. All the bike’s ancillaries, right down to the ignition switch, have a quality, expensive feel to their operation that at this level is expected.

Even the side-stand, long a failing on almost all Italiana, works properly, leaving Bimota as the last refuge of the suicide stand. It’s beautifully cast in alloy, supports the bike on firm surfaces with no rocking or instability and folds away almost out of sight. It’s not the first thing to touch down - I suspect that’s the rider’s elbow!

The 748 is no lightweight at 196kg dry and this is the one area where its age is beginning to tell. Some current 750s are down to around 160kg and the extra heft, combined with fairly conservative steering geometry, makes it turn in a little slowly; it can be hard work on quick flic-flacs. By the same token it’s as stable as the Rock of Gibraltar; the little Boge steering damper mounted across the front of the fuel tank does its job effectively without interfering with low-speed control. The only twitch I got from the front end was a single side-to-side shudder on full-bore upshifts, at which point I suspect there is very little weight on the front wheel.

When I collected the bike from Peter Ilgmann, the new Ducati dealer for the Western Cape, there were a dozen new ones on the showroom floor and a comprehensive range of spares in stock. The rapid increase in the prices of Japanese sport bikes makes the Ducati compare favourably while the 10 000km service intervals, in contrast to the industry standard of 5 000km, makes them no more expensive to run than a Universal Japanese four, despite the complexity of setting the desmodromic valvegear.

Nearly seven years after Ducati stunned the world with it this is still The One. It is still the standard by which sport motorcycles are measured and will be for the foreseeable future, despite the efforts of Ivano Beggio at Aprilia and the might of Japan Inc. Its handling is impeccable in terms of real-world riding precision and the power delivery of the harder-revving 748 version is an eye-opener. More than anything else, it will remind you why you ride a motorcycle.

Thanks to Peter Ilgmann for the test bike Your own will cost you R92 000.

SPECIFICATIONS

Motor: Liquid-cooled four-stroke 90-degree L-twin.
Capacity: 748cc.
Bore x stroke: 88 x 61.5mm.
Valvegear: DOHC with four desmodromic valves per cylinder.
Compression ratio: 11.5:1.
Power: 71kW @ 11 000rpm.
Torque: 73Nm @ 9 000rpm.
Induction: Marelli electronic fuel injection with two 50mm throttle bodies.
Ignition: Electronic.
Starting: Electric.
Clutch: Hydraulically actuated dry multiplate clutch.
Transmission: Six-speed gearbox with chain final drive.
Suspension: 43mm Showa upside-down cartridge forks adjustable for preload, compression and rebound damping at front, progressive linkage with monoshock adjustable for preload, compression and rebound damping at rear.
Brakes: 320mm semi-floating discs with Brembo four-pot opposed piston callipers at front, 220mm disc with Brembo opposed piston calliper at rear.
Tyres: Front: 120/60-ZR17 tubeless. Rear: 180/55-ZR17 tubeless.
Wheelbase: 1410m.
Seat height: 790mm.
Dry weight: 196kg.
Fuel capacity: 17 litres.
Price: R92 000.