Dance with the Diavel

Since this is a bike review, let’s talk about chocolate. A pinch of sea salt in a chocolate bar or cooking chicken with chocolate shouldn’t work, but they do.

Which brings me, naturally, to the Ducati Diavel V4.

At the launch of the original V-twin Diavel in Sicily in 2011, all the hardened sports bike riders took one look at it in the morning and decided that although it looked fabulous, it wasn’t going to work because it was a cruiser.

However, they all came back at teatime grinning from ear to ear about how astonishing it was, mainly due to a rear tyre which, although it was 240mm wide, had a sports profile which allowed you to exploit a remarkable 41-degree lean angle to the full.

This is unlike most cruisers, which had a lean angle of around 28 degrees and shallow profile tyres which tended to reach the edge then tip into corners with disturbing instability.

So why, if you’ve got the world’s best muscle cruiser, would you change it? Well, Ducati had developed a V4 for the Panigale, Streetfighter and Multistrada, so it was an obvious move to fling it into a Diavel and see what happened.

The power of the 1,158cc V4 is 168bhp compared to the 159bhp of the 1,262cc in the most recent version of the V-twin Diavel, mainly because the V4 can rev higher, reaching peak power at 10,750rpm compared to the V-twin’s 9,500rpm.

It’s also 5kg lighter than the V-twin, but the torque is slightly lower, at 93 lb ft rather than 95, and reached at 7,500rpm rather than 5,000.

Press the Go button and, although the syncopated beat of a V-twin is one of the most evocative sounds in the motorcycling orchestra, the V4 is satisfyingly gnarly, if a tad smoother, and that’s mirrored when you get going, with progress silkier, especially in first and second gear, than on the V2.

There are four riding modes – Sport, Touring, Urban and Wet – and even in Touring, acceleration is as smooth and brutal as Bond. Connery, that is, not Moore.

Sport brings a very satisfying urgency to progress, and Urban and Rain modes reduce max power to 115bhp and soften the throttle response for pottering through town in downpours, if you like that sort of thing.

Handling on the old bike was astonishing, as I said above, and this one is better still, thanks to the lighter weight, a stiffer monocoque frame rather than the familiar Ducati trellis, a steeper steering head angle and a counter-rotating crank as on the firm’s factory race bikes.

Braking is as smooth and brutal as the acceleration, and the only minor disappointment in the whole package was the very woolly bite and feel from the rear brake. It did work eventually with a firm foot, but is nowhere as good as the front.

However, all in all, Ducati’s gamble in changing a brilliant bike has paid off with an even more brilliant one.

Geoff Hill is supported by Vanucci motorcycle kit, exclusively available in the UK online at Louis Moto (louismoto.co.uk/en) which stocks 55,000 motorcycle and leisure products from over 500 leading brands