For details on arranging your own visit to the factory, jump to the bottom.
In December '95, we ordered a 748 biposto from Frontiers Motorcycles in London.
We wanted it for the end of April, so they helpfully specified "mid April -
in case there's a delay". Hahahaha ...
The end of April came and there was no sign of the bike, and no word on when it might turn up, so Frontiers kindly (sort-of) lent us a 750SS to be going on with. We had a choice of bikes but we wanted to try a 750 Ducati to see what it was like.
The 750SS handles well: slow-steering but stable. The engine's pretty
feeble and the ground clearance is poor, with the brake pedal being the first
to go down for some reason (you can't quite see the pedal dragging in this
shot, but believe me it was).
May and June came and went: The two Frontiers customers ahead of us in the queue dropped out, leaving us with the very next 748 through the doors.
We moved house at the start of July (so at least we had a garage for it) and soon after we got a call from Frontiers with unprecedented news: The importer (Three Cross) would receive ten 748s by the beginning of August. We rejoiced, and began to think about "P" plates.
The start of August came and went with no word. Three Cross lost the distributorship when Moto Cinelli were appointed sole UK distributors. The factory entered it's August slumber, and we prepared for our holiday in Italy: last week in August, first week in September.
On 29th August 1996 we were in Bologna, and we got a "miracle" visit to the Ducati factory. Here's the story ...
I got the impression I was being told to go away and stop bothering them.
Well, our May trip was postponed to late August and I didn't get around to calling them again, but we went to Bologna anyway intending to have a look at the Ducati factory (along with the nearby Lamborghini, Bugatti and Ferrari factories).
Instead of calling the factory myself, we persuaded the receptionist at the hotel to call for us, thinking we'd have a better chance if the negotiations could be done in Italian.
Ten minutes of Italian later, the very excited receptionist came off the phone and said that an extra-ordinary visit was happening that day, and we could tag along with the group. We should ask for Engineer Zaché and our visit was authorised by Eng. Uccelli. We were "not a little lucky", he said, we were "very, very, very lucky".
We assumed that there was some owners' club with an arranged-months-in-advance visit, so we did feel pretty lucky to be able to tag along. We hoped they'd be some kind of English-compatible group.
Our visit was at 2pm and we were, of course, very keen not to be late or get lost, so we drove out to the factory to check where it was. We found it very easily.
We then had four hours to kill, including lunch. We'd looked in the Yellow Pages and found that Ducati dealer Gio.Ca.Moto was in Calderara di Reno, a small town about five miles west of Bologna, but we didn't find them. We found out later that they've recently moved ...
Walking back to the car, a red bike popped out of one of the open doors. A 916SP with a Dainese-clad rider rode alongside the building and out of sight behind it. A minute later we saw him pull up at the traffic lights ahead of us. When they changed he crossed the junction with a huge wheelie, but hardly any engine noise, just a gruff "Wuuh".
(We've been trying for ages to think of a way of spelling that noise. Imagine the noise of a deep, short bark from a big dog. Or try a big V-twin. :-) )
We were shown in to the works canteen just inside the gate and directed to the bar at the end. I started to soak up the atmosphere ...
I also started to feel a bit of a prat for wearing my "Ducati Superbike" t-shirt as we stood in full tourist regalia (t-shirt, shorts, camera) at the bar with the mechanics in their Ducati and Cagiva overalls.
The bar is adorned with postcards from around the world (presumably from employees' holidays) and sports trophies, I guess from the works football teams. What set this works canteen apart from most others is the photographs of World Superbike champions standing exactly where I was. Foggy seemed just as uneasy as I felt!
Around 2.15 an Austrian couple turned up, and ten minutes later an Australian man with two kids. At 2.30 Eng. Zaché arrived to say there were a couple of others supposed to be coming and we'd just give them another couple of minutes. They hadn't turned up by 2.45 so we set off without them.
It was a big open-plan hangar with a mix of older machining tools and
some modern CNCs. Eng. Zaché was very knowledgeable and had apparently
written the CNC program for cutting the camshafts as his thesis at university.
He worked at Ducati before university and returned afterwards, working in
engineering, external relations, internationalisation and now quality
assurance. The factory works an 8-hour day but a couple of machines work
double-shifts. They have been gradually modernising their machinery but now
everything is working at full capacity to produce 150 units per day. To
achieve the 300 per day they want, they'll have to totally re-do everything.
One end of the room worked aluminium (crankcases and cylinder
heads) and the other iron (cranks, camshafts and valve guides). Only five
engine components are made by Ducati, the rest are bought from contractors.
The two sections were further divided (where necessary) between 2-valve and
4-valve machining. The machines at the end of the line "bored out" the
cylinder head castings which are made to the smallest capacity of that
design, i.e. the 4-valvers start as 748 and are bored to 916, 944, 955,
996 ...
We saw working at all stages from the rough castings to the finished objects, and we were free to take photos. My first photo was of a big basket of 4-valve cylinder heads, and the second was a trolley of completed engines labelled "955 S.P.".
(Notice the crate is stamped Termignoni but has "Ducati" chalked
on the side)
Next was the engine assembly hall. This was again quartered, into 2-valve
and 4-valve lines, and initial and final assembly.
Initial assembly is
performed one-operation-per-person, but final assembly is
one-engine-per-person. The final assembly line for all the 4-valve Ducati
engines in the world consists of 2 thirty-foot benches.
I asked if engine variants were mixed on the line and was told no, they just work on a single type at once, stopping and starting the line to switch types.
(See the document wallet accompanying each engine on the line)
Next we went through to a small engine cold-test area where the engines are
oiled-up and turned without spark-plugs to see if they're vaguely OK. The rest
of the hall was a stash of parts, with racks of tanks, mudguards, side panels
and the like.
Then through to two further assembly lines where the major chassis and engine components met up. Clearly a run of 748SPs was just beginning, as engines, yellow bodywork, frames, crates of Termignonis, and Ohlins fork assemblies waited.
(This picture represents about 18 months' allocation of 748SPs for the
UK!)
The room was very quiet because a lot of staff were
still on holiday: The factory slows down from mid-July to mid-September for
national holidays, stopping totally for one week in August but virtually
stopped for most of the month. Other businesses (such as Dainese) close for
August.
By the end of this hall, the bikes were complete but for the fairings,
which waited in another hall and are added after the rolling-road tests.
The line had clearly just changed from 916s to 748SP as the last of the
916s was going down the line, followed by the first 748SP.
This must be
one of the most satisfying lines to work on, as components came in one end and
motorcycles go out the other. Frame, engine, wheels, swingarm, shock,
chain, exhaust system, fuel system, electrics - everything is assembled on
this fifty-foot line.
We were stunned to see ten 748 bipostos at the head of the queue, and even
more stunned to see that the front bikes had
"Inghliterra" stickers on the headlight! One of these bikes is
ours! It must have missed getting on the boat at the start of August by a
the length of an Italian lunch hour (or by the length of a foreign investment
negotiation, whichever is the shorter).
Eng. Zaché seemed a bit bemused by our excitement and not as
apologetic as we'd hoped when we told him how long we'd been waiting. He
reckoned it took about two weeks for the bikes to get from there to the gate
:-)
I thought it was interesting is that most of the 916s had Pirelli Dragons but some had different tyres, Michelins I think. Is that a market difference or did they just run out of Pirellis?
The market stickers I saw were "Inghliterra", "Europa" and "Germania". The
mph speedos for UK bikes have a marker at 55mph but I suppose US bikes have
a different headlight pattern.
Next we saw a couple of empty halls which will be fitted out with new machinery as part of the production doubling, and then to the final testing where bikes are run on a rolling road. We saw a 900 Monster being run gently up and down the gears while switches, brakes and suspension were checked out by the "rider".
And that was the end of our tour. It took about 30 minutes altogether, and I took about as many pictures! Eng. Zaché said that the factory don't normally do tours but they make an effort to show enthusiasts around if they can get a few together.
The Australian guy said he just happened to be in Bologna and his mate at home had a 900SS and he'd just come to the factory to make his mate jealous! He'd just phoned the day before and "laid it on really thick" about how far he'd come, and how much he wanted to visit, and how much he loved Ducatis ...
We were thrilled to get to see inside the factory and fascinated by what we
saw and heard. Seeing our 748 nearly complete was a wonderful bonus. We
immediately wrote a postcard to Frontiers asking them to claim our bike from
the importers!
From Bologna we went to Florence, but really, how can Michelangelo's
David compete with a hall full of 916s?
Ten months to the day since we put our deposit down, we sadly gave up on the 748 and decided to get two good bikes instead of one great one. I think we'll have more fun overall, than forever two-up on the 748.
On 2nd November 1996 we became the proud owners of a '97 Kawasaki ZX-6R, and on 23rd we bought a '94 ZXR750 (L2 version). It took us slightly over the price of the 748 but when we looked at those two bikes in the garage it's hard to imagine that a 748 could be worth swapping them for.
The Texas Pacific takeover has shaken up Ducati a lot. Maybe they'll start to consider their customers a little now. Maybe the availability will better match demand too - but somehow I doubt it. For many people, the unattainability of the bikes is part of the pain/pleasure experience of Ducati.
