Before Honda started working on its road-going version of its V4 MotoGP race bike, there was the Ducati Desmosedici RR. A fairly close approximation to its namesake, 1,500 units of the Desmosedici RR were built by the Bologna Brand, with the coup de grâce being the hyperbike’s $72,000 price tag.

Despite its racing pedigree, with a MotoGP World Championship at the hands of Casey Stoner too boot, sales for the Ducati Desmosedici RR were surprisingly sluggish. You can even find a few remaining models still on the showroom floors of some select Ducati dealerships.

Maybe it was the price tag, maybe it was the public’s less-than-adoring relationship with the new MotoGP Champion, or maybe it was the fact that the production-based Ducati Superbike 1098R was said to be faster than the RR around certain tracks (Motorcyclist & MCN). Maybe it was a function of all the above.

However, in our eyes, the Ducati Desmosedici RR remains one of the most drool-worthy sport bikes produced in the past decade — after all, it really is as close as you’re going to get to a road-going GP machine…besides the Aprilia RSV4 Factory APRC.

After Ducati completed its production run of the Ducati Desmosedici RR, many began to speculate as to the company’s encore uber-exclusive model. Despite Ducati’s internal belief that the Desmosedici RR was a relative failure as a model (it would be safe to say that Ducati didn’t expect sales of the RR to take nearly as long as they did), as far as halo products go, the Desmosedici RR ticks all the right boxes, and begs for a next-generation.

In many ways, the Ducati 1199 Panigale is the company’s follow-up to the Desmo, and interestingly enough, the Panigale is now also beginning to struggle with sales, admittedly not to the same extent as the RR.

Looking at the photos after the jump, you can see a lot of the Panigale in the Desmosedici, which is of course due to the Ducati 1199 Panigale’s MotoGP-inspired “frameless” chassis design that uses the motor as the basis for the motorcycle’s structure.

Building the headstock/airbox off the forward-facing cylinder head, and the tail/rear-subframe off the rearward cylinder head on the Panigale, we see the same design elements in the Ducati Desmosedici RR, except maybe one or two generations behind the current superbike (Ducati went from a steel trellis design, to a carbon design, to an aluminum design, and now rests on a aluminum perimeter-frame design).

Allowing Ducati to make a ridiculously light motorcycle, the design philosophy holds some serious strong potential. We don’t imagine the thought process on this chassis is over just quite yet, regardless of what is occurring in MotoGP right now, though Ducati Corse certainly has its work cutout for itself in that arena.

Is there a point to all this? Maybe not, beyond something to mull over on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Daydreaming fodder is after the jump.

We’ve had our fair share of controversial articles here on Asphalt & Rubber, with some posts dealing with hot-button topics, while others were designed to stir the pot a bit. Usually though we know what sort of trouble we’re getting ourselves into, even before the first comment is left by a reader, but no article caught us by surprise more than our initial coverage of Roland Sands’s latest custom project: the RSD Desmo Tracker. A flat track bike with a Desmosedici RR heart, there’s something about taking the MotoGP replica and turning it into a steel-shoe racer that elicits a very visceral response from Ducatisti and flat trackers alike.

Maybe it’s because those two parts of the motorcycle world are just that far apart — one is reserved for dentists having a mid-life crisis, and the other for back-woods hillbillies that can only turn left. Maybe it’s because people think that if you own a $40,000 Desmosedici RR, the last thing you should be doing with the machine is making it something else. There’s no doubt that Desmo is the sort of thing little boys put posters of on their bedroom wall, so does tampering with Bologna’s GP opus change that childhood fantasy?

We could delve into this topic further, but I doubt we’d get very far in the conversation. I will say this though, just like you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge a bike by its build progress. That being said, this post is one of those articles that we see trouble brewing a mile away. A friendly reminder: the comments section is below, near the bottom of the page.

We haven’t had a sketch by Oberdan Bezzi on the site in a while, but the Italian designer has inked this Ducati concept that we thought would help everyone get through the work week. Coining the name “Desmodoctor” it should be clear to whom Obiboi is paying homage to with this design, as Bezzi imagines what sort of “gift” the Bologna company would give Rossi to play around with when he’s not racing the Ducati Desmosedici GP11 or GP12.

Those boys in Southern California are at it again, as Roland Sands Design has taken on building a customer’s Ducati Desmosedici RR into a custom street tracker. According to RSD the lucky owner is Justyn Amstutz, and this zero miles Desmosedici RR is one of three in his stable. With 989cc 200+ hp V4 motor that revs to 16,000 rpm, RSD hopes to take Ducati’s beast of a street bike, and turn it into something that requires a steel boot to ride.

UPDATE: All the tickets to the raffle are now sold out.

Ducati’s Desmosedici RR is about as close to a MotoGP race bike as you can get on the street. But with a $72,500 price tag, the Desmo replica is a bit out of the price range for most mortals, so what if we told you could get one for $40? That’s what’s going on right now with the Los Feliz Charter School raffle, sponsored by ProItalia. There’s only a hundred or so of these $40 tickets left, so if you want a chance of snagging a Desmosedici on the cheap, you better act fast.

After teasing us last week with just a shot of the motor NCR Millona M16 motor, NCR has finally released full pictures of their take on the Desmosedici RR. Weighting just 319lbs, and making over 200hp at the wheel, we called the NCR M16 a Desmosedici on steroids when we first saw the specs. Now looking at the detail shots of the bike, we see plenty to drool over. Photos and more after the jump.

NCR is known for its stunning renditions of Ducati motorcycles, our personal favorite being the NCR Corse Millona One Shot. Of course no bike in the Ducati line-up is safe from getting the once over from this performance-meets-aesthetics tuning brand, and thus the NCR Millona 16 was born. Expected to weigh 145kg (319lbs), make over 200hp (at the wheel), and include a carbon frame, the NCR Millona 16 is a Ducati Desmosedici RR on steroids (BALCO would be proud).

Finishing the end of a limited-production run of 1,500 motorcycles, only eight Ducati Desmosedici RR motorcycles remain in the United States as Pro Italia of Glendale, CA just took delivery of the last Desmo that will hit US shores from Bologna. The venerable GP replica that a common man can own made quite a stir when it was announced, and speculation has already begun about a successor for the RR. Will the next incarnation (if there is one) be an 800cc version? Or well Corsa Rosa wait for MotoGP’s switch back to 1000cc’s?