Ducati Continues To Evolve With the V4

Ducati’s switch from high-revving V-twins to the present MotoGP-derived desmo V-4s poses an ideological problem for some Ducati enthusiasts. They insist that Ducati is, and should forever remain, a V-twin company. For them, there is a received litany that begins on April 23, 1972, when Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari dominated the first Imola 200 road race on Fabio Taglioni’s definitive creation, the Ducati GT750, or “bevel-drive.” This achievement told the world that Ducati, for years known only for small sporting singles, had entered the modern age of big high-performance bikes.

Ducati’s first entries of a V-twin at the 1972 Imola 200.

Ducati’s V-twin identity intensified for Americans with Cook Neilson’s well-publicized Daytona Superbike win in 1977 on a Ducati modified by him and friend, the late Phil Schilling.

Ducatis are to fall in love with. Their appeal is forthrightly centered upon the emotions. What living human being makes the “I gotta have one” decision by staring at a spec sheet? We see a face that strikes deep and we are lost.

A “deviation” occurred when for 2003 Ducati decided to join the FIM’s new MotoGP premier class, with a desmo V-4.

Heresy, damnation, hellfire! For those to whom the V-twin is Ducati, this cannot be understood.

Stand back and remember that Ducati is a business, trying to secure its future in a constantly changing world. In making its way, this company had to adapt to one revolutionary change after another, and in the process has come to thrive on change and the novel technologies needed to deal with it.

When I asked Claudio Domenicali (now CEO of Ducati) how a V-4 was chosen as the company’s entry into MotoGP, he said that they had first analyzed the possibility of making a 990cc V-twin competitive. The first problem was that of achieving fast, highly efficient combustion in the huge bore required. “We had no experience with this.” The second was mechanical: making a twin of extreme bore/stroke ratio reliable at 17,000 rpm. The choice of a V-4 was dictated by the common sense of starting with what you know best: the well-understood combustion in already well-developed smaller combustion chambers.

Ducati’s flagship Panigale superbike has been powered by a V-4 desmo engine since 2018.

The same common sense also drove the decision to operate the V-4′s valves by the system with which they had the most experience: desmodromic, in which one cam lobe lifts the valve via a light finger follower, and then a separate cam lobe, acting through a closing lever, positively closes it. No valve springs to fatigue and break, no pneumatic spring system with seal problems, snifter valves, and other novelties. Race what you know best.

Ducati cannot be a single engine architecture, endlessly refined. Ducati is a history of revolutionary adaptations required by the need to survive in the market.

Here is an outline of those revolutions:

Immediately postwar, the company produced whatever it could sell: low-cost radios and four-stroke clip-on bicycle engines. Engineer Fabio Taglioni arrived from Mondial in 1954. By designing the Gran Sport 100 he set an aspirational high-performance model at the top of less sophisticated products. Sound familiar? He gave it the shaft-and-bevels cam drive that would serve so many future Ducati singles. Taglioni himself replaced this bevel drive with toothed belts circa 1980 to provide accurate function without complication.

Having an interest in positive valve operation (desmodromic), Taglioni from 1956–1958 designed a series of 125cc race engines that made Ducati a force to reckon with in small-bore GP racing.

When little Fiats pushed small motorcycles out of the Italian transportation market, Ducati experimented with larger singles and tested a British-style parallel twin. Harsh vibration said no to both. Something better was required.

A “desmo rebirth” occurred at Ducati in the late 1960s, producing the excellent 350 desmo single. Taglioni, knowing that a 90-degree V-twin can be given complete primary balance, effectively combined a pair of 350 desmo cylinders on a common crankcase to make the GT750. This was the solution—its low vibration allowed Ducati’s history of high-rpm power to continue. It was scalable, providing the displacement the new market demanded. Its 1-2 dominance of the 1972 Imola 200 roadrace launched Ducati into the big-bike market.

A young engineering student, Massimo Bordi, saw that fusion of Taglioni’s positive valve drive with Keith Duckworth’s fast-burning flat, four-valve combustion chamber was the next logical step. When Bordi joined Ducati and his concept engine was tested, it was the first Ducati to give 100 hp.

Ducati engineering polarized into a Taglioni faction and a Bordi group. Despite this power struggle, Bordi’s synthesis prevailed on merit.

In 1990 Bordi’s liquid-cooled four-valve desmo Ducati V-twin won the first of 14 World Superbike championships, defeating all comers—European and Japanese. That desperate, fast-paced development, constantly adapting to competition, to new rules, and to fresh technologies, put the company in the first rank.

Ducati’s Desmosedici Stradale V-4 production engine was born from the brand’s MotoGP racer.

When Ducati entered MotoGP in 2003, the design chosen was conceptually a pair of Taglioni’s V-twins, side by side, incorporating the technologies in which the company had the greatest experience: combustion chambers of moderate diameter, and desmodromic valve operation.

This engine is now dominant in MotoGP, able to make of the order of 300 hp at 20,000 rpm. Continuing Dr. Taglioni’s 1954 placement of an aspirational high-performance model at the top of Ducati’s product line, Ducati’s flagship bikes are now powered by V-4s.

Browse our Ducati inventory equipped with the powerful and technologically advanced V4.