The launch at the 2023 EICMA Show of the Ducati Hypermotard 698 Mono street-bike, powered by the all-new Superquadro Mono engine, represents the introduction of the Italian manufacturer’s first single-cylinder customer model in exactly 30 years... since the Supermono road racer made its racetrack debut in 1993.
More than three decades after it first appeared at the October 1992 Cologne Show, the Ducati Supermono doesn’t just remain the most sophisticated and innovative single-cylinder motorcycle yet conceived – even compared with the firm’s latest arrival – it’s also become the rarest and most collectible customer model of any built so far by the Bologna company, with just 67 bikes built in total and 30-year-old examples now changing hands for six-figure sums.
The brainchild of former Ducati engineering guru Massimo Bordi, who conceived its unique engine, it was also later 999 and Multistrada designer Pierre Terblanche’s first Ducati project. Moreover, supervising development of the frame and acting as project leader for the whole Supermono venture was current Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali’s first job after joining the firm straight out of university. That meant he was also my race manager, as I was the rider chosen by Bordi to race a factory-backed customer bike in Europe, America, Japan and Australia against the Japanese and other Euro-singles then dominating the flourishing SoS/Sound of Singles class, soon to be rebranded as Supermono by the FIM.
Those 67 examples of La Ducatina were built and sold in two versions, the first 41 bikes coming in 1993 with a 549cc capacity, the second 26 in 1995 bored-out to 572cc. All incorporated the same horizontal-cylinder desmoquattro format derived from Bordi’s World Superbike champion 888cc V-twin motor, with the upright cylinder replaced by a blind housing containing an articulated counter-balancer. This proved so effective that the engine was safe up to 11,000 rpm – some going for a half-litre four-stroke single, even a desmo.
The Supermono class was a flourishing category worldwide in the 1990s, on the basis of a very simple rule structure: one cylinder, a four-stroke engine cycle – and everything else was free. It ran as a World Superbike support category for four years, attracting riders from all over the world.
It also delivered close, exciting racing from a wide variety of different bikes powered by Yamaha, Honda, KTM, Husqvarna, Gilera, Suzuki and Rotax engines, some punched out as far as 780cc and a series of sophisticated, well-engineered race bikes including the BYRD-Yamaha, Rumi 701, Bimota-Gilera GB1 and BMR-Suzuki. Against such bikes even the second series 572cc Ducati had one drawback – its lack of cubes, which meant that it later on struggled for top speed against the ever-more-powerful maxi-singles.
Still, anyone who ever raced a Ducati Supermono – from the likes of Frankie Chili, Mauro Lucchiari, Ducati’s current MotoGP team boss Davide Tardozzi and our own Alan Carter, down to the humblest club racer– fell in love with it. It was a bike that was ‘born well’, as they say in Italy…
The technical format of the
