Ducati Scramblers
250 and 450 versions in road and off-road guise – they’re so beautiful, yet struggled to sell when new
Last month we looked at a specially-framed Scrambler; here we look at the 250 and competition 450 R/T you could buy
IT’S a red hot day in a red hot Mexican desert in June, 1969 and the Doug Douglas/Jim McClurg team has just crossed the line after winning the inaugural Baja motorcycle race. Their mount is a standard Ducati 350cc Scrambler, which looks more like a commuter machine than a desert racer. Despite this, it’s done the job.
Later, the Baja 1000 would be immortalised in the 1972 film On Any Sunday but the 1969 event is scarcely documented – except for an old pamphlet picture on Google (and even then McClurg’’s name is spelt wrong). But publicity vacuums aside, the 1969 Baja marked a hugely significant stage in the evolution of Ducati’s off-road output – including the two machines in this feature.
These machines – an R/T 450 Desmo and a 250 Scrambler – belong to the same family tree as that 1969 Baja victor – a family tree whose genesis is thanks to a Transatlantic business deal, Italian politics and ever-expanding crankcases. And at the heart of all this is one man: a Hungarian Holocaust refugee called Joseph Berliner.
THE SCRAMBLER:
“The 250 Scrambler was bought as a tatty winter runaround, although it did have a bit of a pedigree. Its Australian owner used it to compete in the 100th and although there were a few hiccups, they were often just as good as their Italian counterparts. As I had commuted on Ducati singles for over 10 years, the idea was to leave it as a bit of a ‘characterful hack’, to be used when the weather was too dodgy for my more pristine bikes. That plan soon fell apart, as I couldn’t leave it looking so sorry for itself. Even the tank had been painted with Dulux, and so I embarked on a rolling restoration.
“Parts availability is excellent but pricey, so gradually the ‘hack’ was transformed into a thing of beauty. The engine has an electronic ignition and a complete top end rebuild courtesy of Paul K at DTS. The most difficult job was restoring the fuel tank to its former glory, as when stripped back we found braised up holes from a bullet which had seemingly made its way through the tank. As replica tanks weren’t available at the time, the only person I could find with the skills to rebuild the tank (or in this case, re-create) was a specialist in prewar sports car bodies. He did a superb job.
“The 250 was then sent for specialist chroming and then the lovely paint was finished with hand pin-striping. The cost of this was astounding, but as it is the centrepiece of the bike I thought it well worthwhile – until replicas of the tank started appearing from India a few months later at a fraction of the price!.
THE R/T:
“The R/T came from America with the Baja Hot Rod featured in last month’s CBG. Straight out of the desert, like most R/Ts the delicate glass fibre mudguards had been replaced with Preston Petty Mudders and the side panels were also dumped back in the 1970s. The bike had a lovely patina and there are so few unrestored R/Ts left that there was no way I was going to strip that back for an ‘as new’ finish.
“A check over by Paul Klatkiewicz revealed that the engine was sound, so all it needed was a carb clean, spark plug, some fresh oil. It was then ready for its MOT, dating certificate and registration. It is an early bike with electrics limited to battery free ignition, but thankfully as it is a 1971 machine it only needed the addition of a bulb horn to get on the road. As it stands it is pretty hairy on the road, with punchy engine, ultra low gearing and knobbly tyres, so you need your wits about you. But it really comes alive on dirt tracks, which is its natural environment. It is easy to set up an R/T for road use with dual purpose tyres, a lighting kit and higher gearing. With this done the R/T makes a perfect bike for classic events such as the MotoGiro or MacGiro, which is where mine may get its next outing.
TO RIDE….
“The Scrambler is a lovely gentle bike, easy to handle and easy to start. Whilst not as quick as the more sporting Ducati singles, it will run all day at traffic speed, as I found out when I took it up to Scotland for the MacGiro. This is helped by the fact that, like many well built singles, there is a vibration-free sweet spot in the rev range.
“Of course, being such an eye-catcher, it fitted in perfectly running around town on the Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride. However, it’s in its element pottering around the back lanes of North Yorkshire, and on a mellow Sunday afternoon there’s nothing else I’d rather be on.”
RAY Dudding’s R/T 450 and 250 Scrambler have come a long way since they rolled out of the factory in 1971.
Both were designed in Italy, one was built on home turf, the other in Spain and both were shipped to the States and ridden in California. Indeed, these singlecylinder machines were worldly before they were even taken out of the crate.
Now they’ve retired to North Yorkshire, where CBG caught up with their custodian, Ray Dudding, PR officer to the Ducati Owners’ Club and owner of last month’s cover bike – who explains his fascination with these pretty motorcycles.
“The Ducati Scramblers are just lovely machines,” he says. “The 250 is a great thing to ride – it’s so easy and comfortable I rode it to Scotland and back last year for a camping trip. And the tank in that rich yellow and chrome is so evocative of its era that people just love looking at it.”
The machines also embody a pivotal era in Ducati’s history – an era that was largely steered by the company’s American distributor, Berliner Corporation, which entered into business with Ducati at a time when the Italian marque needed it most.
Ducati was physically and financially decimated during the Second World War and – like many Italian businesses – its postwar future was far from hopeful.
The wider Italian economy was equally depressed, so much so that its government formed the Institute for Reconstruction of Industry (IRI) in order to take over and revive a number of industries – including engineering. The Government-controlled IRI rebuilt and took control of the Ducati factory and from 1946 set about building basic clip-on bicycle engines. It was a successful venture: by the early 1950s Ducati was building complete motorcycles.
Ducati’s trajectory was, therefore, looking good – it was even starting to make a successful impact on the racing scene (its 125cc desmo Grand Prix machine outshone many of its rivals during the 1958 Italian national series). But the marque’s manufacturing reach was limited as it struggled to build mass production road machines. Added to this, as the company battled to expand its very modest market share, Italian politics intervened – and not for the better.
During the 1950s state-backed industries and the Italian unions made an agreement which prohibited the sacking of any member of staff once they were formally employed. As Jon F Thompson writes in Ducati: “Ducati’s workforce grew with the postwar European market. When that market softened, the excess workers could not be displaced.” Ducati was thus faced with a huge financial burden.
Fortunately Berliner stepped in just at the right time and struck a Transatlantic deal with Ducati in 1958. And Berliner Corporation knew a thing or two about selling motorcycles: its founder, Hungarianborn Holocaust refugee, Joseph Berliner, started his North American distribution network by delivering Zundapps in the back of his truck. Joseph and his brother Michael quickly built up a network of trusted dealers across the US – dealers ready and waiting for the beautifullyengineered 125 and 175cc Ducati singles. Through Berliner, Ducati had cracked America.
The partnership was fruitful: Berliner smashed its initial target of selling 700 bikes in the first year and ended up selling 2000. As word spread about Ducati, so did sales: the following year Berliner sold a staggering 3000 125 and 175cc machines. Not bad considering that, barely two years earlier, few people had even heard of
Ducati. Inevitably, as Ducati’s US market share increased, so did Berliner Corp’s clout. What Berliner wanted, Berliner got. And this included a scrambler machine.
Based on dealer recommendations, Berliner asked Ducati to build a scrambler especially for the American market.
But it was a bold ask: the southern
European market’s sporting interest was predominantly circuit-based and thus Ducati had no track record of building offroaders. But nonetheless, Berliner got what it wanted. This is how – several years later – Ray’s scramblers came into being. But more of that later…
The first US-destined scrambler was the Motocross and these were produced in 1959 with 125, 175 and 200 capacity engines. In his book, Ducati Singles: First Person, Tom Bailey recounts his experience of working in a Ducati dealership during the 1960s: “Compared to the other similarly sized machines available at the time, such as the 200cc Triumph Cub, the Motocross was quite competitive. And, despite being expensive for the time period, they sold well.”
There was a surge in off-road pastimes during this time: dirt track racing and rough scrambles became increasingly popular, especially in California, which had access to all manner of terrain. Berliner – with its finger permanently on the pulse
– picked up on this and made another request to Ducati: a 250 scrambler.
Ducati obliged and the Scrambler was officially born. The Scrambler was more sophisticated than its Motocross 200cc predecessor and – as Ian Falloon writes in his Standard Catalogue of Ducati Motorcycles – it was designed as a ‘four in one’ machine, suitable for road racing, enduro, flat tracking and street riding. He writes: “Although the basic style was similar to its predecessor, there were 19 inch chrome plated steel wheels with Pirelli Motorcross tyres.”
The Scrambler underwent various changes throughout the 1960s, the gearbox gaining an extra cog, taking it from four up to five speeds. The most significant development was its expansion of the crankcase, from a ‘narrow’ crankcase to a ‘wide’ crankcase, which allowed for greater capacity, a higher state of tune and increased power. The narrow case had been an ever expanding evolution of the early 175, all the way up to 350. The widecase engine was much more substantial to eliminate any previous weaknesses, being designed around the future potential for a highly tuned 450. The 250 and 350 available at launch were effectively smaller versions of the same engine.
Tom Bailey remembers when news of the new, wide-case Ducati Scrambler was first announced in his book, Ducati Singles: First Person. He writes: “We began seeing pictures and specifications of the new Scramblers in early 1967. And we were excited and anxious. A new frame which supported the swing arm better. Heavyduty long travel shocks. A disaster-proof chain path! It looked like Ducati were actually going to build a serious Scrambler.”
Ducati had beefed-up the chassis and built an all-round more robust machine. Crucially, this satisfied the demands of its marketing department, which wanted a larger, more grown-up looking machine.
But all this added weight, and Ducati had realised that a softly-tuned engine with smaller valves and a mild cam would eliminate the problem of novice riders thrashing the engine. As a result, the Scramblers didn’t always see the power increases that the new engine could handle.
But Berliner would intervene, once again, as Tom remembers in his book: “The Berliners put off importing any wide case Scramblers until the remaining leftover 1966 narrow-cases were sold. Consequently, the new models did not begin arriving until late 1968.”
Berliner Corporation’s decision to delay the import of the wide case singles for almost a year-and-a-half had a devastating effect on the Ducati factory, as Bailey writes: “The Italian Government responded by replacing the management. And the new bureaucrats immediately adopted a more business-like approach.”
One of the earlier moves to make money had been to licence the build of some of its machines to the Spanish-based Mototrans factory. Many Ducatis – including Ray’s scrambler – were made in Spain and even, in some cases Scramblers with Spanish engines were stamped with ‘made in Italy’. This Spanish-Italian business agreement also relieved Ducati’s pressure with the Scrambler: it could essentially outsource some of the manufacturing of the model.
Ray says: “While Ducati was in trouble during the postwar period, the Spanish economy was also a mess and the country needed a home-built motorcycle of their own. The Italians were the go-to people at that time – it was a similar situation to Lada later manufacturing the Fiat clones
in Russia. The Italians were very much into having machines copied and built around the world, if the money was good enough,” he says.
But when the wide case machines did land, they were a disappointment – at least for Tom Bailey. “Any enthusiasm we had for the machines vanished as soon as we saw them in person…. The Scrambler was considerably larger and bulkier than its narrowcast namesake. Power had not been increased but the new bike was heavier.”
To make matters worse, the US market was, by this time, flooded with economical Japanese machines such as Hondas. Meanwhile fashion – ever the fickle beast – had changed and Ducatis were no longer the desirable machine they were in the early 1960s. To put this into context, Tom describes sales of the wide-case singles at the time: “The shop where I worked had been selling close to 75 Ducatis per week during the late spring and summer of 1966. During the entire year of 1969 they sold six.”
Ducati’s reputation was saved, albeit briefly however, by Doug Douglas and Jim McClurg’s Baja victory on a standard 350 wide case overhead camshaft Scrambler. Ray’s 1971 250 Scrambler shares many of the same features as this machine, as he explains:
“One look at the photo tells you that the Baja bike is a pretty stock bike, although fitted with the touring tank. It is no surprise that they won the long distance desert race without issue – once a Ducati single is set up properly, they can be very quick and will run beautifully without any niggles.”
Ray’s 250 Scrambler has been transformed from near-wreck like condition to a gleaming machine sprayed in daisy-gold yellow. He said: “In the end I chose that yellow because it is the colour most associated with the Ducati Scrambler.”
Berliner leapt on the Baja victory and publicised it in its sales literature – albeit spelling Jim McClurg’ name wrong. But despite the misspelling, Berliner were deeply impressed by the Baja victory and went back to the factory to ask Ducati to design and manufacture another off-road machine, only this time, it would be a serious off-road prototype. Once again, Ducati obliged.
Ray says: “Such was the impact of the Baja victory that Ducati went back to the drawing board and instructed Italian scrambles champion Walter Reggioli to develop a whole new chassis.” This new machine was named the R/T, which stood for ‘road’ and ‘track’.
“When it was finally launched in 1971 It had an aggressive stance which looked so much more purposeful than the standard Scrambler,” says Ray. “And best of all, it was
powered by the ultimate development of the Ducati single – the glorious full fat 450 bevel drive Desmo engine. Unfortunately, this jewel like power unit pushed the price through the roof to $1189, a fortune compared to the burgeoning two-strokes. Lights, ignition switch or a silencer weren’t even options for the first year, although they did come later.”
Sadly, much like its wide case Scrambler predecessor, the R/T came too late. “It landed just as big off-road singles fell out of fashion, left behind in a cloud of two-stroke smoke,” said Ray.
Despite the R/T’s lukewarm reception, however, American magazine Cycle
World couldn’t praise it enough (though it is worth noting that Berliners were big advertisers in the publication). When the magazine tested the R/T in 1971 it said:
“As a trail mount the Ducati 450R/T is superb, it is particularly suited for Northern California or East Coast terrain”.
The R/T was a seriously capable machine but perhaps its sheer power and sophistication was, to put it bluntly, too much for ham-fisted novices, as Ray explains: “The RT was a proper highpowered, built for off-roading bike and it is quite a handful, especially with the lower gearing. Ducatis – especially models such as the R/T – were a league apart from other marques in that they had these beautifully engineered, precision-made engines. But the variation in the hand-built engines was also a problem because everything had to be shimmed.”
“The way Ducatis were built is almost the exact opposite to many British bikes – the British were made to cope with loose tolerances, were easy to fix but would require regular fettling. The Italian Ducatis were made to be set-up precisely by someone who was really skilled, they would run really well and put a lot of power out – but required that level of skill to set them up properly.”
Tragically, the US market lost interest in the R/T after the 1971 launch and as few as 463 R/Ts in 350 and 450 capacities left the Ducati factory. By 1975, Ducati ceased all its single cylinder masterpieces – the Scrambler and R/T among them. The very market that led to the creation of Ducati’s Scrambler series had equally instigated its sudden retirement.
The design, success and fate of Ducati’s single-cylinder scramblers was not driven by motorcycle competition, nor was it driven by a particular designer, nor, even, Ducati’s director Dott Giuseppe Montano – it was determined by one man: Joseph Berliner.
Berliner Corporation would shape Ducati’s history by planting it on the US map and at one point almost devastating the company at the same time. Money really does talk.
But this history, and the ceasing of single-cylinder Scrambler production in 1975 at the Bologna factory, makes Ray’s models all the more special. And while they might be several thousand miles from their spiritual home of California, they are in good hands.