NCR Brand History

NCR was born in 1967, in Via Signorini, on the western suburbs of Bologna. The three founders, Rino Caracchi, Giorgio Nepoti and Rizzi, started building motorcycles based on the famous Ducati platforms. For approximately 30 years, until the early 90s, being helped by Franco Farnè, Recchia, Pedretti, Cavazzi and Taglioni, the company managed to create several unique bikes capable of winning world-class competitions. The most famous one is the Ducati 900NCR on which Mike Hailwood won the 1978 Formula 1 World Championship in the Isle of Man. The NCR team was the first official racing team of Ducati.

During the 70s, Ducati didn’t participate in racing competitions and because of this, engines and chassis were given to NCR in order to be improved. Since the beginning, the alliance between Ducati and NCR impressed everyone and besides Hailwood, other famous drivers raced with NCR, the most known being Cannellas, Grau, Perugini, Francini, Ricci, Gardner and Spencer.

Nowadays, the NCR limited series based on Ducati's platforms can be found anywhere in the world. The year 2002 was pretty important for NCR as the company launched one of its most popular models, the 100ONE.

A year later, at EICMA Fair in Milan (Salone del Ciclo e Motociclo), NCR introduced the “naked” prototype, MACCHIA NERA, based on Superbike 998RS engine. This motorcycle had a weight of 135 kg (297 lbs) and produced 185 horsepower. In 2004, the 100ONE prototype entered pre-series production and announced its plans to enter the Supertwins Italian championship. The first official racer for the new NCR Racing Team is Gian Maria Liverani, who won two out of three races.

The year 2005 was also very important for NCR because another motorcycle was launched, the MILLONA, the first bike completely designed, developed and built by NCR. MILLONA is considered to be a pretty great bike, each model being built only on demand and only to be used on the race track.

In 2006, the NCR CORSE Racing division was officially launched, taking part in multiple Supertwins and Ducati Desmo Challenge competitions.