A few years ago, I reviewed the re-incarnation of the Ducati Supersport (the 939). It was on the A372 across the Somerset Levels (of petrol head infamy – big straights, fast open bends, plenty of tight stuff, with Westonzoyland drag strip conveniently situated en route) when the epiphany happened: the brief and rare manifestation of the sublime, perfectly in sync with machine. A cliché, but doesn’t everyone ride in pursuit of those fleeting moments? Unexpectedly, the Supersport somehow facilitated them in a way no other bike had before or since – and there have been plenty, including more powerful and sporty varieties – until, that is, the other day.
Last summer, I acquired an S2r 800 (2005). By common consent one of the best looking Monsters ever, it’s also one of the lightest. Mine got treated to a Nitron rear shock and Andreanni fork internals; Louigimoto did the decat. I live in the back end of beyond: whichever way you go, there are 5 miles of rough, very single track roads to tackle before you can open the throttle. Finding a compromise setting for those and the A roads beyond seemed impossible, and the rough stuff kind of soured the experience of the bike – because you always knew what was waiting at the end of a ride: a literal pain in the arse. However, with those new suspenders in situ and a fair bit of trial and error, I eventually cracked it. The bad felt passable, and the good felt really good, and then – about a week ago – sublime. It all came together, in a way it hadn’t done since 2017.
So what do a 2017 Supersport and a 2005 S2R have in common? This.
Ok, so that is an NCR Ti Trellis with customisable tuning options, but you get the drift: the trellis is the common thread here. In practice, trellis frames are light (compared with other steel frames), offering rigidity with a degree of flex. That’s why they’ve had massive success in competition on and off road (Ducati and KTM respectively): it’s an extremely versatile design. (So versatile that Casey Stoner – who took the frame all the way to the pinnacle as GP champion – complained that each one felt different. Luckily, most of us are going to get nowhere near that level of discriminatory ability.) Trellis frames encourage a bike to find grip on the lean: fast, sweeping corners are their metier. Ducati switched their GP bikes from trellis to monocoque in 2009 and their production sportsbikes followed suit. In racing terms, it was a disaster. Ducati had to wait until 2022 for their next GP world champion, by which time the bike’s design had been through many iterations. A similar gap ensued in Superbike racing: the trellis framed 1098 won for Ducati in 2011 – to be replaced by the monocoque 1199 the following year – and then nothing until 2022, which must rank as something of an Annus Mirabilis in the firm’s history. The trellis design had proven hard to replace on the racetrack.
You can still buy a new trellis framed Ducati: the Hypermotard, the Desert X and the Scramblers remain. The 698 Hyper is the lightest Ducati you can buy; the 950 Testastretta powered version was tragically discontinued in the UK last year. It had enjoyed the reputation of being the best handling bike from the Borgo Panigale factory, which normally translates as being the most fun. Interestingly, the trellis is evidenced on other more recent models in the form of a rear subframe (eg the new V2 models). It’s still around. And then there’s KTM, whose trellis framed bikes have always had a reputation for excellent handling; but the Austrian company have been lurching from one financial crisis to another in recent years, and problems with reliability and a thin dealer network don’t sit well with each other. The recent massive investment into the company by Bajaj may yet bear fruit, but there’s a long way to go.
Ducati is one of those firms whose adherents will always have a tendency see the firm through the lens of history. Things like the trellis frame, Desmo valve actuation and the L twin are seen as authentic manifestations of the brand, while more recent innovations are disparaged. And yet the truth is that those Ducati cornerstones are still very much in production. No manufacturer works in a vacuum; things like ever tighter emissions and noise regulations and protective electronics are simply facts of life. The purchase of the company by Audi also ruffled a few feathers; but compare Ducati’s stability to the chaos at KTM… An alliance with a firm like Audi may also be bearing fruit in terms of engineering knowledge and expertise: the Motoraad division of BMW would not be where it is today without the cars.
Ducati recently released some images to celebrate their Mugello livery for 2025. The bikes (below) are plastered in sponsorship marketing, but we shouldn’t forget that the Renaissance surroundings and the artefacts in situ are themselves a kind of branding, showcasing the wealth and power of the patrons – albeit the branding in 15th century Florence was a little less corporate…
