CBGYour guide to...
UNLIKE MANY THINGS FROM THE EARLY 1990s, the 916 remains beautiful. It’s up there with the Rocket Gold Star and the Brough Superior SS100 as one of the most fabulous motorcycles ever made.
To the majority, a 916 hasn’t grown into beauty: it was stunning from the first time you saw it and is still stunning to this day. It has always been far more than just a motorcycle dressed in a pretty frock.
A racing start
World Superbike racing was launched in 1988 to unify racing into a global championship that viewers and spectators could understand and follow. And those setting the rules, many of them Italian, recognised that Japanese four-cylinder machines would always have an advantage over twins. The rules were therefore created to provide parity for twins. Although this might, on the surface, make it look a bit like the organiser was favouring their mates, from a marketing standpoint it made even more sense. Circuits full of technically sophisticated fours winning everything would be a bit boring. For an example, look at how dull Formula 1 motor racing has become since they all started to use the same engine type. Slinging a few extra engine layouts into the Superbike mix would shake things up a bit.
Rules were set that allowed two-cylinder engines to have up to 25% more capacity than the fours and allowed the twins to weigh quite a bit less, too.
Ducati, then owned by Cagiva, came up with a design for a liquid-cooled, DOHC, desmodromic four-valve twin, the 851, in 1987. The basis of the motor was from design engineer Massimo Bordi’s thesis while at university, updated 20 years later and prepared for production, using the Pantah bottom end – and it was one of the first
