7 photos
In the late Nineties and early Aughts, superbikes dominated the headlines. They were the hook and line which reeled in customers, bringing them into showrooms. Times change, though; by the end of 21st Century’s first decade, the plastic fairing-clad speed machines were still every manufacturer’s test bed for engineering, but a steady decline in sales was indicative of their flagging popularity.
In 2009, I bought a brand-new 2008 Kawasaki ZX-10R for $10,000 to use as a daily motorcycle. Granted, by modern standards, it seems outdated; it didn’t have the ABS, complex traction control systems or the handful of riding modes today’s liter bikes come laden with. (That said, don’t hold your breath waiting for a superbike to come with that sort of price tag in 2019.) But it was a simple machine that was civilized enough for daily use, with a relatively low cost of ownership. Although the high-strung overpowered flagships of today may look similar, they’re a different breed than the superbikes of 10 years ago.
Case in point: the the Ducati Panigale V4S, which costs as much as a family car and packs as much speed and technology as a supercar. Numbers aren’t everything, but have bikes like this engineered and priced themselves out of “cheap speed” contention — and thus relevance?
The Good: There’s no denying how much of an engineering marvel Ducati’s new 1,103-cc V4 is, and how well it translates all of its 214 horses into acceleration. Ducatis always had a decent amount of power, but with the amount of rattling, rumbling and high-end bellows they’re known for, it’s fair to say their bark didn’t match their bite. The V4S, if anything, turns that notion inside out.
