DUCATI’S DEVIL, REBORN…
Ducati surprised pretty much everyone with the Diavel in 2010 when it showed off the bike for the first time, only its second cruiser ever (after the best-forgotten Indiana in the late 1980s). Now, in 2019, we’ve got one which is bigger, faster, better…
Ducati’s muscly power cruiser is a rare fish these days — there aren’t a lot of others around anymore. The extinction of the Harley V-Rod and Yamaha V-Max means fishing isn’t what it used to be. A new species from Harley (FXDR 114) has been introduced, but it hasn’t grown to significant numbers yet. There is the Harley Fat Bob, and a large school of Suzuki M109s swimming around. For whatever reason, many Power Cruiser fishermen don’t go for the well-engineered, attractively priced Suzuki. Occasionally a Triumph Rocket III is snagged, but the line usually snaps before it can be landed, although we are looking forward to riding the new one coming for 2020. That leaves the Ducati Diavel — the Atlantic salmon of the power cruisers — and now we have a new one.
When the Diavel first came on the scene I wondered what Ducati was thinking. I wasn’t alone. Here was a bike which wouldn’t work for die-hard “must be made in the USA” riders, was too “cruiser like” for those after functionality and too expensive for metric cruiser buyers. It was
