For those who decided to jump in early, which trim did you decide on and why? To S or not to S.
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The result from going to the event has not been a transformative one for me, I still feel luke-warm about the bike and need to ride it before I'll know if I'm willing to plop down my money. But it may have changed my mind about one thing; it seems the $4000 upgrade to the S model nets you a pair of lighter wheels and the Ohlins electronic suspension - and nothing more that I could find (please let me know if I missed something)
My experience with electronic suspension has not been good so far, I think I'd much rather have good quality manually adjusted suspension. I"ve never been a fan of the latest forged chickfeet wheels that Ducati has gone to and I like the standard wheels better. 4 grand would buy me a nice exhaust, a pair of aftermarket wheels, or an upgrade to Ohlins RT suspension and a splash of carbon fiber. I think I'd rather buy the standard bike and keep the extra money for upgrades...
At this point I have to change my vote to buying the standard over the S.
I agree entirely with your comment regarding the gauge clusterThe Ducati event was a big success. A ton of people turned out to see the streetfighter and yes it was the only new bike that they actually built up to a reveal. We all stood around and listened to a half hour Ducati sales pitch with videos that have been on the web for months. But there were a few bits of news that we havent heard before - I'll get to that later.
Here's the crowd for the event tonight:
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I waited at the front for about 45 minutes because I wanted a clear shot of the bike at the reveal.
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It was actually quite exciting with a good presentation by the local Ducati Rep
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And here it is:
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Of course I had to get really close because everybody was crowding around so I didn't get any great shots, here's the front headlight nacelle"
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They had to make out like it was derived from the face of the Joker from the Batman movie. Are we that shallow and gullible? How freakin corny!
This is a pre-production bike and he said the "wings" were 3D printed and not the production items but they will look like this. If this is the S model it had no Carbon parts like our older bikes, I was a little disappointed in that.
I did get a chance to sit on the bike - twice actually, and the seating position was super comfortable for me. It felt much closer to the 2019 monster 1200 than the old SFS. The handle bars are wide and reasonably tall giving you a mild forward lean. I'm tall - 6'2" and I sat flat footed with my knees slightly bent, with my feet on the pegs the knee bend was not severe and felt very natural. The seat had a noticeable amount of padding and was very comfortable, it does sit a little higher than the monster but you still feel like you are in the bike and not on top of it. Over-all the feeling on the showroom floor was really just right for me. I think the bike feels a lot more like a normal standard than our 1st gen SF and I can tell that it will feel more natural to ride right from the start. I saw short guys and really big guys sit on it and nobody seemed to look out of place on the bike. This guy was a pretty big dude:
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Overall I think the bike looks really good in person, a couple of negatives do come to mind - I dont like the clunky passenger seat - it doesnt look very comfortable and it really detracts from what could be a much cleaner looking mono posto rear cowl. It had a super funny looking aero lip around the bottom of the headlight that looked out of place to me and the gauge cluster is just stickin out in the breeze, Id rather that whole "Joker face" be redesigned to look more like the front of the panigale from which the bike is born and have a nice neat little windshield and aerodynaic front fairing. To me it looks more like a flat head on the front of a beetle than the face of the joker. But again, I'm just nit picking, the bike really does look good overall. I like it.
Oh and that big news? Ducati is going to start selling 3 different e-bicycles in the US this year... the top unit likely costing nearly $2000 more than the Scrambler dark! (they didnt have final pricing yet)
YEAaaaa.... seems legit...They all claim the first allocation is almost sold out for the year