RIDING THE RING-DING DUCATI
Thanks to the owner, my friend Joaquin Folch, I was able to spend an hour or so riding this restored ex-ISDT 125 Regolarità very gently off-road around his country property outside Barcelona, and in something approaching anger on the roads outside. In doing so, I registered a personal milestone by riding a Ducati two-stroke for the first time ever in a ducatista lifetime – as well as discovering that everything I’d been told about the bike being hard to ride were absolutely true! After you’ve coaxed it into life via the right-foot kickstart, and been rewarded with a spray of blue smoke from the fat Lafranconi exhaust that was a trademark of the bike even when new, the problem is the power delivery, which is worthy of a two-stroke GP racer of the era.
Getting the Ducati off the mark at any kind of speed requires a big handful of the light-action clutch, otherwise it’ll start to trickle away, then die away on you. There’s practically zero pull at anything but high revs – with no tacho fitted, just the minimal speedo needed to pass muster for UK licencing, it’s hard to know exactly when it comes alive, but I’d say you need 6000 revs to go anywhere and it’s all done soon after 9000rpm.
First gear is surprisingly long, so the trick is to hold it for what seems an unduly long time, before clicking swiftly through the 6-speed gearbox’s very precise onedown left-foot gearshift – the first ever on a Ducati motorcycle. You can feel when the power starts to tail off that you’ve passed the 9000rpm power peak and it’s time to shift up – but it’s important to rev it right out in the gears to get worthwhile acceleration. Top gear is also very long, so the idea is to max out acceleration by revving it hard in the gears, then hope you’re going fast enough to pull that sixth gear in more relaxed lope-along mode. The engine is pretty raucous-sounding but quite well-balanced – there isn’t an excessive level of vibration.
With chunky period Pirelli rubber on the Akront rims, there was good grip trailbiking off-road through the Folch orchards, at the expense of on-road feedback in turns. Those trips to the beach or disco with his best girl sitting behind him must have been a little fraught for Ducati’s 16-year old target customer, if it came to getting it on with anyone aboard a tarmac-focused mini-sportbike.
Those small brakes don’t give much confidence in street use, and with the very un-Ducatiesque situation of having zero engine braking on tap, you need to squeeze very hard indeed to anchor up to avoid a Barcelona taxi making an unscheduled and unsignalled stop to pick up a fare. Of course, the wide Magura handlebar delivers lots of leverage, so last-minute avoidances are still possible, and with the narrow 21-inch front wheel the steering is pretty light – the Regolarità goes where you point it on-road in spite of what looks like a pretty raked-out head angle and lots of trail. Off-road, I defer to Italo Forni, who said it had heavy steering in this pre-Six Days first series form – but then he’s a hero who rode the wheels off it, whereas I was just gently picking my way through the pear trees in the Can Costa orchard…
Four decades on from when the Regolarità was launched, we have a clearer idea nowadays of what we expect a Ducati to be – and it’s not like this. Look – maybe it’s just as well the last Ducati two-stroke ever made was a flop. Or else, instead of a succession of glorious desmo V-twin Superbikes, Ducati might have gone the Aprilia route, and built a succession of two-stroke 125/250 GP road racers and off-roaders. Yes, definitely a good thing, then…