Ducati News Today

Pierre Terblanche is no longer working for Ducati (to the huge relief of many) but is now plying his designer’s trade over at Moto Guzzi. Recently he spoke on the new Ducati Multistrada 1200 from his perspective of designer of the original air-cooled Multistrada 1100.

Terbalanche is a fairly infamous fellow amongst Ducatisti designing things as hideous as the original Multistrada 1100 (which we panned) and the poorly received 999 which almost brought the company to its knees. In the interests of fair balance he had a hand in the mild restyling of the 851, penned the Sport Classic range, the Hypermotard and the simply divine Ducati Supermono. Mixed results then.

When asked about the new Multi he volunteered that the model he designed was originally planned to include a water cooled variant and that although the new Multistrada 1200 is a good bike (we agreed when we rode it) he felt it was too derivative of the class leading BMW R1200GS.

“I think [the new 'Strada] is a good bike and it performs really well. When we did the [first] Multistrada in ’98/’99 there was a water cooled version planned. There was a thought at the time that that was a direction motorcycling could go in due to aging riders etc etc. It’s simply a more practical approach…As far as aesthetics go, there are interesting things on the bike that I think are a fairly obvious attempt to try and steal something from the [BMW] GS”

link: Hell For Leather

No doubt Pierre would have made the new Multi more unique looking, however it is hard to blame Ducati for ratcheting back its risk tolerance after the disaster of the 999. The Ducati 1098 / 1198 looks derivative simply because the company had to have a sales hit and the new Multistrada 1200 is plenty ugly enough without his attentions!

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