Ducati to sell 1,200 MotoGP replicas!

By Mike Nicks

Ducati, which planned to make no more than 400 copies of its Desmosedici RR MotoGP replica, has announced that it has received a remarkable 1,200 orders for the 990cc machine - worth around 68 million euros (?46 million) in business.

And the Italian company, whose 800cc GP7 model is leading this year's MotoGP championship, will deliver the first of the road-legal replicas nearly two months ahead of the original schedule, at World Ducati Week in Misano on June 28-July 1.

"The response to the bike exceeds all our expectations, and the total surprises everyone who hears it," Van Epps, the factory's director of product marketing, told Crash.net. "We are currently organising the production area for the bike in the factory. For the first time, Ducati Corse [the company's racing division which builds the MotoGP and World Superbike machines) is being invited to extend its expertise to a more production-based project."

Ducati originally expected a limited number of rich collectors or hyper-enthusiasts to buy the Desmosedici RR, which was launched last year and is based on the GP6 machine on which Loris Capirossi won three MotoGP races in 2006.

The 16-valve V4, which features gear-drive to its twin overhead camshafts, is priced at ?37,000 (55,000 Euros) for those who placed an order before February 2007, and ?40,600 (60,000 Euros) for subsequent customers. Each has had to pay a deposit of 15,000 Euros (?10,000).

And, as in its racing activities, Ducati is again beating its Japanese rivals to the flag in producing the first ever street-legal MotoGP replica.

"We are now learning how to build the bike in the factory," Epps told Crash.net. "We are trying to find efficiencies in building sub-assemblies off-line rather than on the production line. If we assume that we're going to build 10 or 20 bikes a day, it's then pretty easy to work out whether we need one or two production lines, and one or two shifts."

Ducati has resolved the inevitable queries about the reliability and maintenance of a MotoGP replica by including a three-year warranty and three years of scheduled servicing in the price.

"The materials used in the Desmosedici RR are exotic and the horsepower is dramatic, but the bike is not complex to maintain," Epps said.

Any authorised Ducati dealer will have the right to sell the bike, as long as they send a technician to the factory for training in servicing the replica.

The bikes will come with Ducati's hallmark desmodromic valve gear and trellis steel frame. The bodywork is in carbon-fibre, and the bike will be available with a special race kit that includes a 102dB racing exhaust.