AT THE START OF THE 1990S, DESPITE ITS heritage and Italian passion for the product, Ducati was in dire straits. No, not the band. Being a relatively low-volume manufacturer and the majority of its production being race-focused, niche machinery, there was a requirement for greater sales from the parent company at the time, Cagiva. Even the hoped-for success of the then new 916 wouldn’t bring the increase in demand that was needed.
Fortunately for the Bologna-based brand, the American-born Argentinian designer Miguel Angel Galluzzi was working for the company. The story goes that he had a Ducati of his own, an 888 Superbike that he’d modified, taking off the bodywork in a ‘streetfighter’ kind of style. When he was seen riding it to work by Claudio Castiglioni, the Ducati boss immediately saw there was a bike that could enter production very quickly, without too much in the way of development or design costs... although some say that it was Massimo Bordi who first thought of the idea and who in turn asked Galluzzi to design it, with Bordi himself saying that he’d asked “for something which displayed a strong Ducati heritage but which was easy to ride and not a sports bike. He came up with a proposal and I thought, ‘this was the bike Marlon Brando would be riding today
