The Cw Library
THE CW LIBRARY
Ducati Super Sport
IT'S ALMOST HARD TO REMEMBER NOW HOW ECCENTRIC and stunning the Ducati V-Twins were when they first came out in 1971. In a world where inline-Fours seemed the wave of the future, a bare-bones V-Twin with its mechanical heart on its sleeve looked like a throw-back to another era of craft and artisanship. There was nothing old-fashioned about performance and ridability, however, and when Ducati's first desmo V-Twin, the 750SS, won the Imola 200 in 1972, the world stood up and noticed. And has been noticing ever since.
As author Ian Falloon points out in this carefully researched and beautifully illustrated new book, Ducati’s simple and handsome air-cooled desmo Twins have, with the march of time, metamorphosed from pure race machinery into the company’s bread-and-butter streetbikes. Particularly since the more exotic, liquid-cooled 916/996 series has taken over the racing mantle. Yet the Ducatis bearing the SS name continue to offer what they always did-a fine balance between horsepower, size, weight and handling that allows the rider to extract the most from the bike’s potential and to communicate directly with the road.
The whole history of the Super Sports (and later Supersports) is here: from the first GT to the latestgeneration 900 designed by Pierre Terblanche, with
chapters on the square-case SSs, the Hailwood Replicas, the 750 FIs and the 750 Sports that led to the highly successful and beautiful 900SS introduced in 1991. Falloon clearly and carefully unravels the model changes and subtle detail differences' through each family of bikes (with a full specification index at the end), making this book invaluable to the restorer or collector.
If you like these bikes as much as I do (I’ve had five, f of different generations), this book belongs on your shelf, both as a good read and an occasion for fond reflection. If you haven’t owned any SS model at all, the stunning photography alone will probably soon have you looking for one. It worked on me. Again. Peter Egan
Ducati Super Sport, Ian Falloon, 160 pages, $25; Haynes North America, 861 Lawrence Dr., Newbury Park, CA 91320; 805/498-6703
