Ducati Desmodue

The Complete Story from Pantah to Scrambler

Greg Pullen

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781847979025
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Bicycles & Motorcycles
• Index: Technology & Engineering

A definitive account of the popular Ducati Desmodue - the reliable, affordable, high-performance motorcycle range that boasts one of the most successful Italian motorcycles of all time, the Ducati Monster, and is still in development today. Including full production histories, comprehensive specification details and owners' experiences, this new book covers the history of Ducati and the rise of the brand in the 1970s and Grand Prix racing with Fabio Taglioni's desmodromic valve engine design. The world-beating TT2 and TT1 racers are covered along with the best-selling Ducati Monster, the Desmodue 900SS and the SportClassic range. With the Scrambler, and new Ducati factories in Thailand and Brazil, the Desmodue story is brought right up to date - a story based a wonderful corner of Italy, some very special motorcycles and the astonishing people who made it all happen. Fully illustrated with 211 colour photographs.

CHAPTER ONE

FROM ELETTROTECNICA TO MECCANICA, FROM SINGLES TO TWINS

When the three Ducati brothers left their eponymous factory, shortly after World War II, one went on to become a rocket scientist, another an estate agent and the third to make automatic gates. The talents these roles demanded – scientific genius, a clear mind under pressure and precision engineering – might be essential when establishing a successful motorcycle business, but the Ducati family had nothing to do with Ducati motorcycles. The bikes came later, after the war and political gamesmanship had brought the Ducati brothers’ business to its knees.

Ducati was founded on 4 July 1926 as Scientific Society Radio Brevetti Ducati SpA, financed by selling a property in Florence belonging to the brothers’ father, Antonio Cavalieri Ducati. He was eager to build a company around his brilliant eldest son, Adriano, already a physicist of note by the age of nineteen. Having moved the family from Comacchio on Italy’s east coast some 100km (60 miles) west to Bologna, industrial engineer Antonio wanted to take advantage of the city’s reputation as the hotbed of Italy’s industrial revolution. The university was also a world leader in physics and radio telegraphy, thanks to Bologna’s most famous son at the time, Guglielmo Marconi. Founder of the company that still bears his name, Marconi started on his rise to fortune and fame by winning the Nobel Prize in Physics with his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission.

A REVOLUTION IN RADIO

Adriano Ducati was very much following in Marconi’s footsteps when his home-made radio equipment transmitted the first bilateral radio wave between Italy and America. His brilliance soon came to the attention of the world and the Italian government by allowing a ship, for the first time, to keep in radio contact with five continents at once. For this Adriano was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Crown of Italy, not least because his radio required just 90 watts while Marconi’s equipment needed 2,000. Suddenly international radio transmission didn’t require a specialist power supply.

Adriano Ducati, from a personal album but used as the first Ducati publicity photograph. VICKI SMITH

A Manens capacitor, Ducati’s first product. BELTANDBEVEL.COM.AU

If you make radio capacitors, a complete radio is an obvious new product: the Ducati Radio RR3404. BELTANDBEVEL.COM.AU

Ducati’s first offices were three rented rooms near to the centre of Bologna, with equipment being manufactured at home. The aim of the business was to exploit Adriano’s patents, of which there were eventually over 200. The first Ducati product was a Manens (‘steady’) capacitor, with samples sent worldwide in the search for business. Ducati’s first order came in late 1926: 3,000 Manens for Mario Argento of the Argentinian Silver Seas Company, at the time the biggest seller of radio components in Argentina. Mario had met Adriano in Buenos Aires and been given a Manens, which his technicians had tested with impressive results. Mario appeared unexpectedly one day at the Ducati offices, straight from Buenos Aires, on his way to visit the graves of his ancestors in Bergamo. Never asking to see the ‘factory’ – fortunate because it was in the Ducati family home’s basement – Mario swept out as fast as he had arrived, his bank’s letter of credit duly forthcoming. This visit changed the lives of the three brothers forever, secured the company’s immediate future, and began the Ducati story.

WORLD WAR II

Adriano’s brother Bruno was a year younger and a talented architect so naturally was charged with building Ducati a visionary, state-of-the-art factory in 1935, in Borgo Panigale on the outskirts of Bologna: still the home of Ducati today. Behind the new avant garde façade some 7,000 employees, many dressed like doctors in white lab coats, had access to facilities that included a university and dentists. An incredible 18km (11 miles) of shelving held stock to be dispatched worldwide, with Ducati having its own offices in London, Paris, New York, Sydney and Caracas. And then came the war.

During World War II the Ducati factory was requisitioned for wartime production, housing as many as 11,000 workers. As the war drew to a close, and with the Italian government contemplating an armistice with the Allies, the Nazis acted with ruthless decisiveness. The Armistice of Cassibile, between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies, was signed on 3 September 1943, becoming public a few days later on 8 September. It was signed at Cassibile, in Sicily, recently liberated by the Allies. This armistice provided for Italy’s total capitulation, and was agreed by both King Victor Emanuel III and Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio.

This meant Italy abandoning the Axis powers despite being, to all intents and purposes, unable to resist Mussolini’s rule or German occupation. The country was plunged into civil unrest, with some forces joining the Allies and others remaining loyal to Mussolini and the Axis. Italian forces both in and outside Italy who would not join the Axis – or were not trusted – were imprisoned. This is where events started to move swiftly and ruthlessly against the Ducati brothers. Their factory was overrun almost immediately the Nazis knew of the armistice, on the morning of 9 September 1943, by machine-gun wielding soldiers, supported by tanks. After all, while most Italian factories – including Alfa Romeo and Piaggio – had been switched to military aircraft production long ago, Ducati had been left to continue producing their high-tech wares. The Nazis didn’t want this sort of equipment disappearing, let alone falling into the Allies’ hands.

By this time the Allies had gained a foothold in southern Italy and, as they progressed north, they worried about Ducati’s expertise and equipment disappearing back into Germany. Once seized by the British Eighth Army in October 1943, the Foggia region’s airfields in southeast Italy were swiftly made good by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, ready for Boeing Flying Fortress B-17 and Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the new Fifteenth Air Force. Their escort was arguably the war’s finest fighter, the P51-D Mustang.

Meanwhile, the Ducati family and employees were busy hiding instruments and stock from the Nazis – and Allies’ bombers – in a network of some seventy underground plants across the country, known as ‘post’ (as in post-war) laboratories. As this progressed the Ducati factory was switched to producing detonating fuses and shells, meaning that the Allies also now considered SSR Ducati a munitions factory. As decisive and ruthless as the Nazi enemy, the United States Air Force declared the Ducati factory ‘Target 18 at 830513’.

Ducati even made electric razors. GREG PULLEN

Ducati cinema projector. BELTANDBEVEL.COM.AU

Ducati Simplex Camera. BELTANDBEVEL.COM.AU

General Clark, commander of the United States Fifth Army, had been charged with taking Bologna by Christmas 1944 and in preparation declared Operation Pancake – the flattening of Bologna’s industry and any ability to resist his forces. On Thursday, 12 October 1944, around 700 aircraft took off took off from Foggia, including some forty Liberators from the Stornara airfield. They were bound for ‘Target 18 at 830513’, reaching Bologna a little after midday. The Ducati factory was razed to the ground.

General Clark did not meet his target, taking until 21 April 1945 to liberate Bologna. But although the war was over, and the politics of change and even talk of a firing squad for the Ducati brothers resolved, their troubles were far from over. They would never be paid the promised compensation for the loss of their factory and within a few years they would lose control of their family business. At least ultimately Adriano’s genius would be recognized when he moved to the USA to become part of NASA and the Apollo missions.

THE CUCCIOLO – AN ENGINE FOR EVERY BICYCLE

It is at this stage the Ducati motorcycle story starts, thanks to Bruno Ducati. During Italy's reconstruction the brothers diversified, manufacturing a variety of products, including a modern electric razor, an intercom and a calculator, besides cameras, jukeboxes and refrigerators. But these were expensive products and, in a country rapidly moving from an agricultural to an industrialised economy where transport for the workforce was fundamental, it was mopeds and small motorcycles that were most in demand. So, perhaps by happy accident, Bruno Ducati's greatest contribution to the factory’s future success was to take on a contract to assemble a small engine that could turn pretty much any bicycle into a moped.

This 48cc four-stroke engine was conceived by Aldo Farinelli, quickly nicknamed Cucciolo (puppy) by its designer after a yappy exhaust note. Initially put into production by automotive engineering firm SIATA, it was soon realized they couldn’t keep up with demand, so Ducati was approached to assist with production. By 1947 Ducati were building 240 Cucciolo engines a day, gradually forgetting about rebuilding their pre-war business. However, despite booming demand for lightweight motorcycles, it was a highly competitive market. Ducati were also far from being the only newcomers to motorcycle manufacturer.

Finally a move towards motorcycles – the clip-on engine and fuel tank that was the Cucciolo. GREG PULLEN

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