BACK TO THE FUTURE

“WITH THE RUNNING GEAR AND ENGINE UNTOUCHED, IT STILL GOES, STOPS AND HANDLES LIKE A BRAND NEW PANIGALE”

DESIGN houses will often customise a new bike to promote their work; think Roland Sands’ Indian Scout and Deus ex Machina’s Heinrich Maneuver BMW. Sometimes it’s a commission from the factory or distributor, sometimes a wealthy client and sometimes it’s just for the hell of it. Invariably it will be a retro-styled bike that they start with.

Meanwhile the rest of us forage for older models whose best resale years are behind them, or build customs from later-model damaged bikes too expensive to fix.

So it’s not often a brand new sports bike gets the custom bike treatment at the hands of its owner, let alone turned into a rat bike, but that’s the case here with Matt Errey’s radical Ducati Panigale 899. He was after a bike with modern electronics