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Ducati Superbike 848

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More two-wheel goodness from our friends in Spain, as Radical Ducati has teamed up with Dragon TT not to make a brand new bike, but instead is helping Ducati Superbike 848/1098/1198 owners stand out a bit more at their local coffee shop bike nights. Creating what they call the Vendetta, Radical Ducati and Dragon TT have put together a kit of parts that transforms the soon-to-be outgoing Superbike design into something completely different.

Gone are the smooth and definitively Italian lines of the Ducati, and replacing them are the edgy and sinister designs of the two Spanish firms.We have a feeling that many Ducatisti will cry heresy over this work, and they rightly should. We don’t expect the Bologna brand to make bold designs like this anymore, and the affect of the Vendetta strikes a darker emotion than is legal in the more southern states of the US. Like a bad night in a BDSM sex parlor, there’s something about the Vendetta that screams “I plan on flogging these canyon corners until they scream our safe word” that we really like. More chills down your spine after the jump.

It didn’t take long for a “spy photo” of the 2012 Ducati Streetfighter 848 to emerge from Bologna, and it looks like Ducati wants to tease out the yellow paint job it plans to bring to the smaller displacement Streetfighter. The five-bolt arrangement on the rear-wheel hub is a give away to the fact that an 848 motor lurks in the Streetfighter shown, as the current Streetfighter 1098 uses a six-bolt pattern because of the more powerful 155hp motor. With the Ducati Superbike 848 EVO motor making 140hp (and also sporting a five-bolt rear hub pattern), we can expect that the Ducati Streetfighter 848 to lose 10-15 ponies from its superbike compatriot.