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“Scratch” Ducati Scrambler by Officine Mermaid

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The second of three custom Ducati Scrambler designs unveiled at the Verona Motor Bike Show, “Scratch” by Officine Mermaid is perhaps closer in design to what we connote when thinking about a scrambler motorcycle, than say the design we first showed you by Deus Ex Machina.

Stripped down to only the bare essential pieces of metal, treated to look more rustic than its birth certificate implies, and complete with taped-over headlight, we have some “Grade A” hipster bait right here from Dario Mastroianni and his crew.

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Bikes

“Hondo Grattan” Ducati Scrambler by Deus Ex Machina

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At the Verona Motor Bike Expo, Ducati presented the first customized Ducati Scrambler models. As you may remember from our review, this $8,600 machine is pitched with a heavy lifestyle component, and Ducati hopes that fat margins on t-shirts and jackets will overcome the thin margins on the model itself. To that end, the Italian company has gone to great trouble in making the Scrambler “cool” for the younger “post-authentic” crowd.

As such, Dario Mastroianni (Officine Mermaid), Filippo Bassoli (Deus Ex Machina), and Nicola Martini (Mr. Martini) were given the first crack at modding Ducati’s newest model. The results have been interesting, and first up on our pages is the “Hondo Grattan” by Filippo Bassoli and the Deus Ex Machina crew in Milan.

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Bikes

Bienville Legacy – From the Mind of JT Nesbitt

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The Confederate Wraith is perhaps one of our most favorite custom motorcycles ever produced, and it happens to be the product of JT Nesbitt’s supreme imagination.

Working now out of his own shop, Bienville Studios, Nesbitt has produced the first of his ultra-premium, tailor-made, American-born motorcycles, dubbed the Bienville Legacy.

Beyond the radical lines, there is the familiarity of things like the Wraith’s carbon fiber girder front-end style, the Motus MST’s V4 engine, and…that is about it.

The rest of the Bienville Legacy motorcycle is unlike anything else on the market, which should surprise no one considering its source (Nesbitt) and the fact that Bienville is setting out to make commissioned bespoke machines for its patrons.

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Bikes

Confederate X132 Hellcat Speedster – By Pierre Terblanche

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The Confederate X132 Hellcat Speedster is the newest motorcycle from the venerable “Southern” brand, and that’s enough of a pedigree for the machine to grace the pages of Asphalt & Rubber, but this latest incarnation of the Hellcat line also happens to be the first work by a certain Pierre Terblanche, who became Head of Design at Confederate not too long ago.

Based around the same 132 cubic inch (2,163cc) v-twin engine as the previous Hellcat models, the Speedster is good for 121hp and 140 lbs•ft of torque. The styling is true to the Confederate canon, though Terblanche’s touches can certainly be seen in the details of the machine.

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Bikes

Ariel Ace – A Very Expensive Honda from England

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The wait is over to see the return to two-wheels by British marque Ariel, as the firm has debuted its very exclusive Ariel Ace motorcycle. Built around a clever modular design, something we have talked about at length here, the Ace is really more than just one motorcycle, and Ariel plans on making each bike bespoke to its customer’s wishes.

At the center of every machine is the 1,237cc V4 engine from the Honda VFR1200F, which is good for 170hp, with 95 lbs•ft of peak torque. Because the VFR’s engine is being utilized by Ariel, the British brand offers a dual-clutch transmission as one of the Ace’s many available options.

Would-be owners will have to decide a number of other options as well, most importantly what kind front-end suspension they wish to run. Ariel offers a traditional upside down Öhlins fork setup, but to be truly unique on the road, the Ariel Ace has an available custom girder suspension setup with an Öhlins TTX at its core. Rear suspension is supplied by Öhlins as well.

Holding everything together is a beautiful aluminum trellis frame, comprised of six sections that are machined to life from billet. Anodized to fit a customer’s tastes, the modular chassis design also has mounting points for a variety of options and accessories, such as different bodywork, fenders, fuel tanks, handlebars, rearsets, seats, and wheels.

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Harley-Davidson XR1200TT by Shaw Speed & Custom

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While we collectively take a ponder on what to do with the electric Harley-Davidson motorcycle that will be in the next Avengers movie, here’s another interesting twist involving the Bar & Shield brand.

We’re not usually ones for cruisers, but the Harley-Davidson XR1200TT from Shaw Speed & Custom tickles our racing inclinations the right way, and makes us remember when Harley-Davidson’s name was synonymous with road racing.

As the name implies, the project started from a Harley-Davidson XR1200. SS&C then added its own custom-built exhaust, along with a Screamin’ Eagle tuner and breather — good for roughly 100hp at the rear wheel.

Completing the look is suspension from Öhlins, wheels from Dymag, brakes from Brembo, while the bodywork is a conversion from SS&C’s own Bonneville streamliner design. Add a custom tail and seat, and you have the XR1200TT.

It all sounds rather simple, but the finished product deceives the time and energy that Shaw Speed & Custom put into the design. This bike looks like it could have rolled right out of Milwaukee, and it puzzles us as to why Harley-Davidson recently stopped selling the XR1200, let alone never built upon the model’s popularity after its debut.

We will keep pondering all that, but in the meantime, enjoy photos of the Harley-Davidson XR1200TT by Shaw Speed & Custom. It might be a Harley we’d have to have in our own garage.

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Bikes

Ducati Elite II Café Racer by Moto Puro

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The Ducati 1199 Panigale is perhaps the pinnacle of technology for sport bikes from Bologna, Italy. With 195 horses of fury, and a positively anorexic dry weight of 367 lbs, the spec-sheet racing for the Panigale is intriguing, if getting around a race track the absolutely fastest way possible is your primary goal.

But what if you enjoy the finer things in your Ducati life as well? In that case, the brains at Moto Puro might have just the thing for your Desmo addiction: the Ducati Elite II.

To build the Elite II, the Dutch builders of Moto Puro took a Ducati 1199 Panigale S, and stripped the machine down to its Superquadro engine and electrical components. From there, those crazy Dutchmen built a café racer style motorcycle, complete with tubeless wire-laced wheels on single-sided swingarm.

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Ducati Multistrada 1200 Toubkal by Affetto Ducati

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Today is Valentines Day, and if you haven’t found that special someone to love and pamper tonight, don’t worry A&R has a date all lined-up for you. A sexy redhead, the Ducati Multistrada 1200 Toubkal by Holland’s Affetto Ducati is perhaps one of the cleanest MTS1200 build we have seen in a long while.

Tastefully done with metallic red, black, and silver paint, the Toubkal looks like something that could have come from Borgo Panigale, had the Italians dared to build a bike with such flash.

Equipped to go where the sidewalk ends (Toubkal is the highest mountain peak in the Atlas Mountains of Southwest Morocco), the Ducati Multistrada 1200 Toubkal features tubeless spoked wheels, proper panniers, and heavy duty crash protection.

Affetto Ducati gets bonus points for the subtle meshing over the vents, stunning paint job, and carbon fiber windscreen, which add a bit of “show” to the Multi’s already stout “go” — we might be rethinking our V-Day plans after seeing this, how about you?

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BMW R90 Interceptor – The Last RAD Bike

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For the past week or so I have been stooped over in a depression, because after hearing the news that Radical Ducati would be shutting its doors after 15 years of incredible custom motorcycle building, I am just not sure if life is worth living. That’s a bit of hyperbole of course, but we are, like many, selfishly saddened to see that Pepo and Reyes will be moving onto bigger and better things.

So, it is with some irony that we bring you the last motorcycle to come from Radical Ducati — ironic because the machine is not one of RAD’s mix-matched Ducati’s, which has given the small Spanish firm such notoriety, but instead the motorcycle is a BMW, with the same unique style and flare. Dubbed the BMW R90 Interceptor, the machine is a joint project between Radical Ducati and MaxBOXER.

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News

Radical Ducati Closes Shop

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After 15 years of making unique Ducati street bikes, Radical Ducati has announced the closing of its doors. The Spanish firm has made a name for itself by building custom Ducatis from various pieces of the Ducati parts bin, but now Pepo and Reyes are off for new adventures. We will miss their unique flare for design, but wish the folks at Radical Ducati all the best in their future endeavors.

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Ducati 1199 Panigale Streetfighter by Hertrampf

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As soon as Bologna debuted the Ducati 1199 Panigale, the speculation was rife on if/when the Italian brand would bring streetfighter and supersport-class machines to market. We have already seen the Ducati 899 Panigale, which isn’t quite race-legal, though packs the superbike’s design philosophies into a more affordable package with a smaller engine displacement.

As for the Streetfighter, the debut of the Ducati Monster 1200 seems to confirm suspicions that Ducati has no plans to continue with a performance-based street naked. With the demise of the Streetfighter 1098, one can only wonder how much longer the Streetfighter 848 will remain in Ducati’s lineup. Surely when the smaller displacements of the Monster line move to water-cooled engine, the we will see the removal of the 848, much to our chagrin.

This still leaves us with some “what if’s” though, as some believe the monocoque “frameless” chassis design of the Panigale makes a streetfighter variant all but impossible. We would have to say that when the fairingless photos of the Ducati 1199 Superleggera that came out this year, our eyes searched for ways to tailor the Panigale’s naked body into some sort of Streetfighter, though it looks like some Germans have gone a step further.

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