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Sometimes rumors don’t take long to come to fruition. Take the case of the 2010 Ducati Hypermotard. Just last week we reported that Ducati had a 696 DS motor based babytard in the works, and today Ducati has officially announced that motorcycle. As we expected the new bike is named the Hypermotard 796, and it shares almost all of the same core design elements as its larger counter-part, including the bar-end mirrors (as we expected).

The biggest news with this release is that the Hypermotard 796 will live up to its name, boasting a 808cc displacement (88mm x 66mm bore & stroke respectively). Many had said the Hypermotard 796 would still feature the 696cc displacement dispite its nomenclature. Ducati instead stroked out the 696 motor, resulting in a comparable 81hp to the Monster 696, while boosting torque to 55.7lb•ft. More details after the jump.

Visordown is reporting today that Ducati has named their road-going, enduro-ish, BMW GS killer, the Ducati Cayenne…yes, as in the spicy hot pepper. One thing is for sure about the name: we’re finding it a little hard to swallow.

First off, it just doesn’t sound very “Ducati”. With bikes named “Superbike”, “Sport Classic”, and “Streetfigher” we’ve become accustomed to Ducati naming its motorcycles with very obvious and descriptive names. Even, the Multistrada, which the new bike is to replace, had a fairly intuitive name for its purpose (we’re ignoring the Monster on purpose here).

Our other eyebrow is raised because we just can’t see why the Bologna brand would name a vehicle after a German SUV. The last thing we need in this world is to be sitting in our favorite yuppie coffee shop and overhear someone talking about their brand new Cayenne, leaving us to wonder if they’re talking about their overpriced kid-hauler, or their over-priced dirt bike.

Our doubt about this report is a shame, because Visordown goes on to report some tech specs on the bike we haven’t heard before.

UPDATE: According to MCN sources inside Ducati have denied that the Strada Aperta will be renamed Cayenne