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If you haven’t read my thoughts on riding the Ducati Streetfighter V4 S already, I suggest you do so before going further. Don’t worry it is a “short” review – only a couple thousand words or so.

For the TL;DR crowd, the Ducati Streetfighter V4 S is an amazing machine. It has all the low-speed manners that its 1098 predecessor lacked, but does so without sacrificing the astounding speed and horsepower found from its Panigale V4 lineage.

“Refinement” is the word that I keep coming back to when I talk about the Streetfighter V4 S, which is both a nod to the differences found from the Streetfighter 1098, but also an acknowledgement of the bar that Ducati is setting with its motorcycle lineup.

At $24,000 a pop – roughly $5,000 more than its closest competition – the Ducati better bring something extra to the table, and frankly buyers expect a more polished machine when they are paying that kind of pricing premium.

Is the Ducati that much better than the Aprilia or KTM? The journalist in me says the jury is still out, primarily because of the testing restrictions we have to deal with concerning the coronavirus outbreak.

But, I can speak about its refinement, which is what I want to do today.

Every new model year, I sit down and write a short list with the bikes I simply have to swing a leg over before the year is out.

The list is governed mostly by what catches my personal interest, but also includes important machines across the different segments of the industry, with the idea that I want to be able to speak intelligently about them and what’s going on in our two-wheeled world.

For the 2020 model year, at the top of my list was the Ducati Streetfighter V4 S. The bike not only appeals to my sport bike loving temperament, but it also marks the return of Ducati back to one of its more core elements – the sport bike category.

The retirement of Nicky Hayden’s racing number at the Grand Prix of the Americas wasn’t the only tribute being done for America’s beloved motorcycle racer. This is because on stage at Ducati Island, a special tribute bike was unveiled  that remembers the Italian brand’s history with the Kentucky Kid,

The special Ducati Panigale V4 is the work of the folks at MotoCorsa, and it imagines what Nicky’s Ducati MotoGP race bike would look like in street bike form.

Though it is known better for its exploits on race tracks, many two-wheeled enthusiasts should know that Ducati’s history extends well into the sand dunes of the Dakar Rally.

Nestled in the Ducati Museum in Borgo Panigale, there is proof of Ducati’s racing history in the Dakar Rally. And while the bike says “Cagiva” on the outside, it was an air-cooled Ducati engine that powered Edi Orioli and his Elefant to two Dakar Rally wins (1990 & 1994).

That machine was painted in one of the most iconic paint schemes ever to grace a racing motorcycle: the Lucky Strike cigarette company’s red, white, black, and gold livery.

So, to pay homage to Ducati’s off-road racing history, the folks at the MotoCorsa Ducati dealership have taken the Ducati Multistrada 1200 Enduro and linked it to its racing pedigree, creating a unique motorcycle in the process.

The effect is a handsome motorcycle that remembers when the Dakar Rally actually traced a route from Paris to Dakar, and when the Ducati brand was thriving in the golden era of motorcycle racing – oddly enough, due to the massive support that tobacco companies were pouring into motorsport racing at the time.

There has been a lot of rumor as of late, about whether Ducati is for sale, and who would be a potential buyer of the iconic motorcycle brand. We have seen just about every large motorcycle manufacturer at some point has been linked to buying Ducati Motor Holding, and now we can add another: MotoCorsa.

That’s right, the top Ducati dealer in the United States is throwing its hat into the ring, and looking to other Ducati owners to help crowdsource the $1.6 billion likely needed to wrestle away the Ducati brand from its owners at Audi AG.

Episode 39 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast is a celebration of one year of motorcycle podcasting, and to celebrate our birthday, we figured we should do a live show in our hometown of Portland, Oregon.

The good folks at MotoCorsa were kind enough to host the 40 brave souls that braved the PNW weather to listen to Quentin and myself blather about motorcycles.

It was good fun, and we covered topics like the recent MotoGP test in Valencia, the business issues that comes with running a race track, and how “race” ABS works and how it’s evolving.

We finish the show with a Q&A session from the audience, with questions about racing, race tracks, new bikes, and how to pronounce Spanish words being the topics of choice.

We are extremely grateful for the turnout at our first live show, and hope to bring the format to other cities in the coming months. We are also thankful for all our listeners who couldn’t make it to Portland, but continue to listen to the show each week. Hopefully, we can meet you all soon.

Until then, you can listen to the show via the embedded SoundCloud player, after the jump, or you can find the show on iTunes (please leave a review) or this RSS feed. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. Enjoy the show!

I have made a number of bad decisions in my life, some of which have come hand-in-hand with my duties here at Asphalt & Rubber. Hindsight is always 20/20, and I can certainly think of a couple machines that I have naively swung a leg over with enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly, the word “prototype”, used in only the loosest of definitions, has been involved in these endeavors.

With rare occasion though, I have been able to see trouble coming ahead of time, and have either had the prudence to step out of its way, or the foolishness to forge ahead with a “what could go wrong” attitude. I would add MotoCorsa’s TerraCorsa project to that latter category.

A proper 195hp superbike, designed by Italians to win road races, the Ducati 1199 Panigale is an alphabet soup of features designed to make a rider go as fast as possible on asphalt.

So when MotoCorsa’s Arun Sharma gave me an opportunity to ride his “track bike” Panigale S, which he painted in Desert Storm beige and shod with Continental TKC 80 tires, well…I of course uttered “what could go wrong?” and graciously accepted.

On its face, the whole idea of taking a superbike off-roading is preposterous. No doubt, you are already making a list of all the things wrong with this idea, while pouring a cold glass of Hatorade in the process. And you’d be right in doing so.

The suspension travel is too short, the Panigale’s 1,199cc Superquadro v-twin engine has too much power, the riding position is all wrong, and let’s just skip over mentioning that the machine is a rolling bone fide crime against motorcycling. Ducatisti, pour out an espresso for this fallen Bolognese, but be forewarned that Arun and the TerraCorsa feed off the hate that this concept brings.

Before you sharpen your pitchforks and storm the castle gates at Borgo Panigale though, let me explain briefly how putting knobby tires on a purebred superbike isn’t as bad of an idea as you think. If anything, the gods must be crazy, because it is surprising how well the whole thing works. These crazy Oregonians are onto something…

The Ducati 1199 Panigale is a formidable machine on the track, something I witnessed first-hand with the at the international press launch for the Ducati 1199 Panigale R at the Circuit of the Americas.

Between the Panigale’s frameless chassis design, high-revving Superquadro motor, and bevy of electronics, Ducati has refined its superbike offering to consumers, and really honed in on making the best street bike possible.

But what if your calling takes you off of the asphalt? Enter the Ducati 1199 Terracorsa by MotoCorsa — yes, the same crazy bastards that made the SeDUCATIve and MANigale calendar photo shoots.

In case you haven’t heard one of my tirades on the subject before, I’m not a big fan of the “girl on a bike” trope that seems so ever-present in the motorcycle world. Yeah, if I regularly dedicated our post list to a few scantily clad women it would probably do wonders to our pageviews report; but honestly, I have zero intentions of ever having Asphalt & Rubber chase and pander to an audience.

In case you didn’t know, if you really need some eye candy of the opposite sex, there are plenty of other websites on the internet that can suit your desires.

So, when we saw Portland-based Ducati dealer MotoCorsa do a photo shoot with a lovely lady named Kylie and a Ducati 1199 Panigale, we passed on running the photos. Then something interesting happened: MotoCorsa did a follow-up photo shoot, this time with men from around the shop, recreating the shots from the photo shoot with Kylie. Perhaps not the most flattering photos we’ve ever seen, it is however a delicious role-reversal, not to mention showing some good humor from the gentlemen involved.

Apparently a successful ad campaign in the motorcycle industry doesn’t have to be all Miracle Bras and ass cheeks…well, at least not in the traditional sense. Who knew?