Originality of design is at least as much a gift as a science, especially when it comes to concocting a new kind of motorcycle that nobody else did before. The problem is that you never really know till you've translated your ideas into metal if it's all going to work out right, for one man's flight of fancy can be another's passport to oblivion - weird, rather than wonderful. Even then, the ultimate accolade awaits: the verdict of the buying public in the Showroom GP.
On that basis, exactly 30 years ago Italo-Argentine progettista Miguel Angel Galluzzi must have been a mighty relieved man after the acclaim accorded to his Ducati Monster, as it began to reach dealer showrooms around the world early in 1993. This came after he was finally able to build the bike for which he'd had the sketches in his mental briefcase for ages, ever since he'd left Honda's Italian design studio three years earlier to join the Cagiva Group. Selling it to their Ducati subsidiary's commercial department had been tough - for this was a motorcycle powered by a desmo V-twin engine that was radically different from anything Ducati had ever built before. As in - Not a Sportbike. But eventually Galluzzi got the go-ahead - and the Ducati M900, aka the Monster, was born.
Even then, there were those at Ducati unconvinced of the bike's sales potential - a fact reflected in the tentative production figure originally projected
