Monster revolution
BIG READ How naked legend saved Ducati
‘The French importer stood up and said he wanted 1200’
Last week saw the world’s press get a first taste of the all-new 2021 Ducati Monster, almost three decades after the firm took the wraps off the original prototype at the 1992 Cologne Motor Show. Entering production the following year, the original Monster M900 went on to become the bike that saved Ducati and also the model that defined a whole new motorcycle genre. The M900’s significance cannot be overstated. Although the subsequent 916 in 1994 grabbed more headlines, dominated World Superbike racing and became Ducati’s ‘poster bike’, it was the Monster and its spin-offs whose huge popularity – and profitability – saved Ducati from financial collapse. From 1993 to 2000 the Monster accounted for an incredible 42% of Ducati sales. To date, more than 350,000 Monsters of all types have been sold. On top of that the Monster has a claim to being the first factory super-naked. No wonder this latest, fourth generation successor is so important.
The broad story of the original’s creation, as the pet project of Cagiva (Ducati’s then parent company) designer Miguel Angel Galluzzi, built out of Ducati’s ‘parts bin’ and only belatedly brought to market, has been told often. But 30 years and 38 models on, with the launch of the first Monster without both the original’s signature trellis frame and air-cooled V-twin, it’s worth telling once more. After all, without the creation of the Monster, Ducati might have ceased to exist. But without its trellis frame and aircooled V-twin, will the new bike have enough Monster ‘DNA’ to live up to the original?
Argentine-born designer Galluzzi became hooked on bikes as a boy, grew up in California and graduated in transportation design from Pasadena in 1986. With more car than bike opportunities, he first worked for Opel in Germany before joining Honda’s nearby car studio and in 1988 moved with it to Milan. It was here, in a late 1980s era when motorcycling was dominated by fully enclosed superbikes such as Honda’s CBR1000F, that Galluzzi’s germ of genius for an alternative ‘all you need is a seat, tank, engine, two wheels and bars’ bike took hold. “I got a [Japanese] Biker Station magazine and they used to do these side views of their test bikes without the bodywork,” Galluzzi recalled recently. “One picture was of the 851, the first generation, naked. We had a new colour photo copier, I made an A3 copy and then did a drawing on top.”
Later that year Galluzzi joined Cagiva… “That sketch stayed with me, and I remember having the interview with Castiglioni [Claudio, boss of Cagiva]. We talked for around three or four hours and I said: ‘This is the kind of bike we should be doing’. He replied ‘Yeah, maybe one day, maybe…’.
It wasn’t until the summer of 1991 that day came. “I had nothing to do and asked my boss ‘Can I go to Ducati and get some parts and put a bike together?’ And they let me
– I think it was because they were trying to get rid of me because I was causing too much trouble – they said ‘OK, go, go, go…’”
The prototype bike Galluzzi then built is the heart of Monster legend. Comprising a 900SS air-cooled engine in an 888 superbike trellis frame with a 750SS front it was his original sketch made metal – and so unlike anything then available even Ducati failed to immediately see its potential, leaving the project to gather dust in a corner.
“At that time Ducati were not interested in naked motorcycles,” Galluzzi remembers, wryly. “So, after six months, I convinced Castiglioni to bring the bike into a big meeting with importers and at that meeting, the importer from France got out of his chair, got his cheque book out, and said ‘Claudio, I want 1200 of those…’ Everyone was like ‘Wow!’ And from that moment on the bike went into production.”
A less scary Monster
A more refined version was unveiled at the Cologne Show in September 1992 called the ‘M900 Il Mostro’ (although this changed to the English translation soon after). It went into production immediately after (a relatively easy task as all components bar the tank, seat and side-panels were ‘off-the-shelf’) and the rest, as they say, is history. “At first everybody was going ‘What’s that?’,” says Galluzzi. “Then it became the success it became because it was a very simple way to enjoy riding a motorcycle that was affordable, too.”