Matt Prior
My Autocar podcast co-host Steve Cropley said the other week that he sees little delineation between those of us who like cars and those of us who like motorbikes.
As usual, I agree with him, but last week I was in the company of some ‘proper’ bike journalists – who tend to be a hardier group than car hacks, given their daily exposure to temperatures and perils – so thought I would ask some of them.
It seems that they also perceive the joys and threats of our hobbies broadly similarly to us. We love the journey, the interaction with great engineering and the handling and performance, while the same kinds of people want rid of us and can’t be bothered to fix potholes.
One rider opined that the bike industry’s move away from track-focused super-sports machinery had made it more accessible and acceptable.
Indeed, I recently visited Ducati UK to ride some bikes for this column and e-bikes for our sibling title Move Electric, and whereas once the firm would have been entirely about superbikes, today only two of its nine model lines are sports bikes. This is like Porsche discovering that it was an SUV company. One of those, the Supersport, was described to me as a “gentleman’s sports bike”. “You’ll love it,” they said.
The market seems to have moved away from superbikes as (or because) the ones homologated for racing have become ever more extreme so as to be quicker on circuit.
It’s a bit like if every supercar was a Ford GT, developed initially for racing then made into a road car, rather than the other way around. They would be more focused but less accessible.
The result in the bike market has been riders turning to more comfortable and less hardcore adventure and street bikes.
I wonder if advances in clothing materials have contributed as well. One can now wear armoured jeans and trainer-like boots on a nice day out, rather than creaking around in clunky boots and sweltering leathers.
Anyway, as someone who used to own a Ducati 748 sports bike and yesterday tried the Supersport 950, I did indeed love it.
The promotional image on Duc
