"… THE MACH 1 THE FIRST HIGH PERFORMANCE 250CC ITALIAN STREET SINGLE TO BE WIDELY COVETED …"
WAY BACK in 1964 Ducati engineering guru Fabio Taglioni designed the company’s first customer road bike capable of breaking the 100 mph barrier, the legendary 250cc Mach 1.
Just 838 examples of this nowadays much prized ton-up model were constructed in the company’s Borgo Panigale factory in Bologna in 1964–66, weighing 116kg dry and fitted with the ultimate evolution of its first-generation air-cooled narrow-crankcase unit-construction SOHC valve-spring motor, with bevel-shaft camdrive producing a claimed 27.6 bhp at 8500 rpm.
Among the Ducati Mach 1’s many accomplishments was delivering the Italian manufacturer its two first-ever race victories in the Isle of Man TT. First came Mike Rogers’ win in the 1969 250cc Production TT on a Mach 1 Ducati, averaging 88.79 mph for the three-lap 113.20-mile race to defeat the horde of Suzuki and Bultaco two-strokes, albeit with another such Ducati in third place, ridden by future GP star Chas Mortimer, who thus scored his first TT rostrum finish with the Italian bike.
The following year in 1970 it was Chas’s turn to win on his Ducati, thus scoring the first of what would be a total of eight personal TT victories on bikes ranging from the Italian 250cc four-stroke single to a fearsome four-cylinder TZ750 Yamaha two-stroke.
Racing success coupled with the model’s inherent good looks helped make the Mach 1 the first high performance 250cc Italian
