PacoT
Well-known member
I kind of like the looks of it, but definitely miss the single sided swingarm for me.
Last edited:
From the manufacturer side, aero wings on a street bike are a giant profit centre. Easy to damage and aftermarket wings probably won't be easy to find. I didn't bother looking but if I was making them, forged carbon Fibre is so easy and cheap in volume but you can still sell them at carbon prices.Youtube comment "Thank god it's not electric" ... well, there's that I guess
Has Ducati said anything about justifying aero wings on a streetbike? I think I hate them
I kind of like the looks of it, but definitely miss the single sided swingarm for me.
When I was younger, the old farts waxed lyrical about KZ1000's, and the even older farts banged on about Norton's and Triumphs. I get where you're coming from, as those are my own reference points, but Ducati isn't dominating MotoGP by being a nostalgia brand. On the contrary, they seem to have become the most aggressively developed bikes out there.I miss the SSA, Trellis frame, L-twin, undertail exhaust, dry clutch (yeah, I know the R still has it). At least they called the new gen the Panigale instead of continuing the 9xx, 1xxx naming convention (despite the brief Panigale 1x99 overlap). Says to me it's a new kind of motorcycle, and it does look nice, but shares very little DNA with the old SBKs.
Except the market target, which is to be the entry-level Ducati, and be relatively simple and stripped down compared to the full fat sportbikes. The Mach-E doesn't even have that, as it's an urban hatchback, not a sporty coupe.Not like the new Monster which shares *nothing* of the old Monster except the name. Ducati pulled a Mustang Mach-E with that one...
A ZX-10R on the Sunshine Coast were the highlights for me. Not many younger men dropping $38k+ on a toy these days, though...Of all the superbikes on the market today, I would probably pick up a Panigale V4S if I was a younger man. Some of my favorite times on a bike was railing around the fast sweepers up north with my buddies on supersports. But that was before HTA172 and lower back pain steered me towards something a bit more comfortable and license-preserving...
A ZX-10R on the Sunshine Coast were the highlights for me. Not many younger men dropping $38k+ on a toy these days, though...
come to the dark side, we still have cookies.Fook. Now I want a sportbike again.
As someone who owned one, you`re not missing out. It's actually a completely miserable experience for street.I miss the SSA, Trellis frame, L-twin, undertail exhaust, dry clutch (yeah, I know the R still has it). At least they called the new gen the Panigale instead of continuing the 9xx, 1xxx naming convention (despite the brief Panigale 1x99 overlap). Says to me it's a new kind of motorcycle, and it does look nice, but shares very little DNA with the old SBKs.
Not like the new Monster which shares *nothing* of the old Monster except the name. Ducati pulled a Mustang Mach-E with that one...
Of all the superbikes on the market today, I would probably pick up a Panigale V4S if I was a younger man. Some of my favorite times on a bike was railing around the fast sweepers up north with my buddies on supersports. But that was before HTA172 and lower back pain steered me towards something a bit more comfortable and license-preserving...
It was pretty though......As someone who owned one, you`re not missing out. It's actually a completely miserable experience for street.
At least current first-current gen.
Riding position? V4 wasn't all that bad actuallyAnyone with sporting pretensions is getting a street fighter v4, probably within a hair of the pani in lap times, far more comfortable
I moved to Vancouver while the Olympics construction had already started, so never got to experience the old road. Post-Olympics, it was just for early and late season runs up to the Bucky's in Squamish to admire the size of the chicken strips. Cops on every overpass, and to really get a lean on, you've gotta be moving well over double the limits. Great place to admire some truly awful riding, though...Nice. S2S before they went two-lane for the Olympics was also a great run, but now it's a total heat score.
We had a 999S (a bike that I remember scoffing when told it would age well when released, but did, in fact, age very well), 675 (that became a 675R after a crash) and occasionally a black 748 who bought the bike used with shiny gold rims and never heard the end of it. Didn't help that he was the slowest of the bunch, too. Endless ribbing about the unsprung mass of 24k gold. The ferry ride back provided lots of bench racing fodder, too. And always, always ended by giving each other the finger as we took our respective exits off the highway.Back in the day, we had a ZX-10R in our regular crew. Also a couple of R1s and a Gixxer Sixxer. Lots of smack-talk about each other's choice of brands. Poor GixSix got the worst of it, even though he was (still is) the fastest guy on the track. Took him out to Bogie and the focker ran a 2:15 the first day.
Jeez, you've got me in a full-on nostalgia trip with West Coast versions of the same experience. Ours were trips to Nelson or south into Oregon. I remember one trip to Nelson where it got near-freezing cold and wet in the mountains coming across from Hope into Manning Park, and I was just wearing leather gloves. I've never hated the vacuum-pack bodywork of my 2007 ZX-10R more than when I was desperately trying to find a way to get my numb hands onto a warm part of the engine. Otherwise, the real hard man was the 675 rider, who did weeks away down the west coast without complaint. The 999 guy also had a Beemer (R1100S) he used for anything longer than 8 hours, so totally cheated.We went everywhere with our SSs, even did a dawn-to-dusk PA run. Lots of slabbing back to the big sh!tty though. Miss those days.
Depends whether you trust the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, I guess? My memory is the 2001 Gixxer 1k was somewhere around $12k new, which would put it at $19k today. No idea about Duc's, as my go-to was to rip the 999 rider for Ducati riders only doing trips to Caffe Artigiano (sadly, he was actually really fast and much faster than me, especially on unknown roads), so I wasn't shopping for one. I'd be curious if you could dig up the Canadian MSRP for a 998, though...As for $38K+, isn't that what literbikes cost back then adjusted for inflation?
$17,700 USD in 2002. That is $30,900 USD in 2024. That is $42,700 CAD.. I'd be curious if you could dig up the Canadian MSRP for a 998, though...
Worse than that, I picked 2002 as the benchmark, which turns out to be when the CAD was at a low compared to the USD at ~$1.60. That works out to over $46k now. Sheesh, no wonder I wasn't shopping at the Duc Boutique...$17,700 USD in 2002. That is $30,900 USD in 2024. That is $42,700 CAD.
Ducati 998 | Cycle World | MARCH 2002
magazine.cycleworld.com