Ducati 900SS

Oucati's 900SS has been around since 1977. In the 21 years since, it's much changed and yet very much the same. The first bikes were almost opulent with their beautiful aluminum pieces, liquid-smooth motors, and rich Conti muffler music.

The second-series bikes of the '90s have beautiful bodywork and are more usable, with hassle-free electrics and carburetors. Though they share no common components, the bikes are remarkably similar in use—light, agile, and forgiving, with an easy-to-use broad powerband and punchy low-end torque.

The first 900s, the silver-and-blue bevel-drive twins, were rightly characterized by testers as "magic on a mountain road." The bike was not only fast—130 mph plus—but it had the confidence-inspiring and friendly feel of the Ducati 750SS, the limited-production racer-with-lights of the early 1970s, from which the 900SS was developed. Skilled enthusiasts thought the bike was magic because it was true to the traditional Italian school of racebike design (dating back to the Moto Cuzzis of the 1920s). That school of thought designed the motorcycle around the rider, not the engine, put him at ease and helped him use his skills. Engines alone don't win races. This philosophy translates very nicely to the street; you'd have a hard time identifying an Italian motorcycle that didn't handle well, if not superbly.

The original 900SS of the '70s and '80s was not only a rewarding backroad ride, it was a pretty versatile one. I took my 77 on the first 1000-mile Crud Ride, around the top half of Lake Michigan, and with a tankbag for my gear happily cruised the highways for nearly a week. But I'd foolishly left for the trip with a dead cell in the battery, leading to a fried connection and an afternoon of trouble-shooting. There are worse places to spend a sunny summer afternoon than the shore of Virgin Lake, in rural Wisconsin, and a soldering gun was waiting only a short walk up the road.

The following day was more 900SS magic, but the next day saw the Ducati go off on one cylinder; naturally I assumed electrics again, but no. The rear carburetor had walked off its inlet stub. This was the kind of thing the Italians seemed to have a perverse genius for. The carb had been secure, but resonant vibration had loosened its grip. Now I knew why I'd seen some 900SSs with their carburetors safety-wired in place. None of the other bikes on our ride had any problems at all. My bike's two incidents didn't spoil a fine trip, but an objective observer might wonder about the flawed magic of the first 900SS Ducatis. It's fair to say that the most consistently happy owners of those bikes are those

When the Castiglioni brothers purchased Ducati in 1985 they were well aware that the bar for sportbike serviceability had been raised from the uneven level that I the 900SS had achieved. The future would offer few customers willing to tolerate carburetors walking away from engines when they weren't looking. Yet the 900SS had put Ducati into the big sportbike limelight. Though the first-series bikes had been discontinued in 1982, the afterglow of the "magic" endured. Could it be revived, given the requirement for Japanese-quality serviceability?

Another 900SS appeared in 1989, developed from the belt-drive, Pantah-engined 750 Paso. The Paso had been the Castiglioni's first new bike since taking over Ducati. It was rather mild by traditional Ducati sporting standards, but it was the most serviceable and easy-to-live-with bike ever built in Bologna. It EVOlved in two different directions: the 906 Paso and then 907ie sport-tourers, and the more focused 750 Sport in 1987, followed by a 900SS two years later.

The new bike made gains in practicality, but its handling and feel could've been better—no one called it magic. Back to the drawing board and the Raticosa Pass (a section of the old Mille Miglia course, much favored by Ducati development riders). When the bike re-emerged in 1991 after this second and more intense phase of development, many thought it was an entirely new machine. And for good reason. Not only did it look entirely different (and really quite beautiful), but the old magic was back; once again motorcycle magazine testers loved it, much as they had the original 900SS. Skilled enthusiasts who spend some time on these bikes, whether the Final Edition featured here, the Superlight, or the standard CR and SP versions, realize that this is a bike designed around the rider; that's why it feels so relatively light and well-balanced for a big sportbike, and why its power is so easy to manage. Sure, it's lost some of the expensive "hand-built" glamour of the original 900SS, but it won't lose its carburetor.
—Bruce Finlayson

Source  1998 MOTORCYCLIST SB