DUCATI V4R
It’s funny, but when you slap a fancy price tag on something and bolt a few bits of bling here and there, it’s impossible not to be drawn to it. Without having even straddled the thing, you’re already fighting the temptation to sell off your grandma’s bone china, and her too if only you can find a buyer, just so you can get a slice of the action. I’ll prove my point. Within no time of the V4R being announced at the back end of last year, Ducati had taken orders for all 1,500 planned units without a single buyer having ever turned a wheel on one. That’s not a bad day in the office for any manufacturer when the retail price tag is a cool £35k a pop. So what makes this bike so alluring? Truthfully, I could waste the best part of your day and mine reciting its spec, because it’s absolutely dripping in the good stuff, but to counter that allure and to put things in perspective, it actually weighs more than a 1299 Panigale Final Edition (which you can still order) and produces less torque and power in stock trim than any of the 1100cc V4 Panigales. So it’s got to be the wings, right? That was the question which was bouncing around my mind when I hopped aboard the V4R for the very first time. There was an aura to the model, ratified by its exotic booming exhaust note, and its aesthetically pleasing brushed aluminum, lacquered fuel cell (which extends like a superbike’s, under the rider’s derriere to keep the weight low and central). ‘This here is something special’ I kept telling myself as I fought the urge to make comparisons between this and the much more affordable other Ducati V4s. To all intents and purposes, it looked and sounded very much the same as its brethren, only that bit less unique than a Speciale that comes with a Tricolore paint scheme and a unique production number engraved on to the top yoke. There was none of that, though sure enough, the bike’s top-spec, manually adjusted Öhlins kitted forks made it stand out from its siblings, even if the coloured TFT dash was the same, as were its switchgears, and as for the seating position and clip-ons, the formula felt very familiar. Maybe this bike didn’t need glitzy colours or