Ducati Hypermotard 1100S

Ducati introduces the pearl white color for the Hypermotard motorcycle. The models are latest to receive the now famous Ducati color which has already made the Ducati 848 and Ducati 696 sell with even greater success.

The fiery Red Ducati color will only cover the frame while the new carbon-grey finish is applied to the outer engine castings of the simple Hypermotard 1100.

If your momma was hip to motorcycles, this is the kind of bike she might want you to stay away from.  “I warned you about hanging out with that dirtbike on steroids,” she’d say. “Your license can’t handle another Exhibition of Speed or Reckless Driving charge!”

“Yeah, but she’s more fun than a year at Six Flags!” you’d say if you just had Ducati’s most recent hit in your garage for a few weeks.

Take a ride on a Hypermotard 1100S, and you will also hark back to past scenes of your life when you were a bit of a punk rebel. It might’ve been surreptitious spitballs shot across a classroom at your buddy, or perhaps peppering an unsuspecting driver with a well-timed snowball. Riders who once enjoyed the thrill of general mischief such as this will find the Hypermotard a willing and prodding accomplice in whatever tomfoolery you still have flowing through your veins.

When aboard the HM, there is a constant struggle with the devil on your shoulder coercing you to jump curbs and pull monster wheelies. There are two ways to come to a stop: You either throw out the aggressive Brembo front binders for a quick halt with the back wheel in the air, or you can just jam on the nicely modulatable rear brake for a tire-smoking, crossed-up stop. This thing is versatile!

You know the Hypermotard is going to be a different kind of ride from the moment you straddle the rambunctious steed. The steel-tube trellis frame and Desmo V-Twin say Ducati, but the riding position says something more akin to Husqvarna.

In fact, despite the many iconic Ducati cues and several components shared with other bikes from the Bologna-based company, this new Hypermotard delivers a distinct riding experience. The first the thing you notice after the tall seat is the view forward that is almost completely unencumbered by any view of the bike. Strange and cool.

Strange and cool, too, is the rakish and minimal bodywork which proudly displays the nicely exposed motor that is clean of unattractive exposed wiring and hoses, and it looks even cooler with the S’s carbon fiber cam-belt covers. The lightweight black composite also graces this new-age hooligan bike in its lower front fender, fork protectors and tailsection pieces – unless you opt for the less expensive standard Hypermotard that instead has gauche plastic components.

The design of the Hypermotard came from the pen of Ducati’s controversial stylist Pierre Terblanche, first debuting in November of 2005 as a concept bike. It was notable in two ways: it was an immediate hit with the crowds at motorcycle shows and it looked relatively easy to put into production. Not long afterward, Ducati announced that we’d be seeing the inspirational new bike on showroom floors around the world.

Terblanche’s gorgeous 1993 Supermono and his retro-cool SportClassics are his greatest design successes, but this new Hypermotard certainly has to rank up as one of his best. This bike oozes personality, proving to be simultaneously both butch and beautiful. Its high schnoz of a front fender might be a bit awkWard, but its derriere is delicious with its graceful pair of aluminum-capped exhaust canisters under the tail and a single-sided swingarm that shows off that sweet pinstriped rear wheel.

Without the ungracefulness of a liquid-cooled engine’s radiator and attendant plumbing to spoil the view, this Eddie Haskell of motorcycles is a pleasure to peruse while sipping a hot coffee or a cold beer. The Hypermotard S like our test bike also has the added eye candy of an Öhlins shock and anti-stiction Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) on the sliders of the beefy 50mm Marzocchi fork; the run-of-the-mill Hypermotard makes due with a non-DLC fork and a Sachs shock, both fully adjustable, for a retail price $1500 lower than the $13,995 MSRP of the S version.

Perhaps the most important addition to the S is its forged-aluminum Marchesini wheels that are lighter than the cast-aluminum hoops on the standard HM. There is no better place to lose weight than from a motorcycle’s wheels, as it allows a suspension to react quicker to road imperfections and significantly lessens steering effort by reducing rotational inertia.

But with the wide motocross-style handlebar, a Hypermotard rider is unlikely to complain about heavy steering. Conservative geometry (a 24.0-degree rake) prevents it from being too twitchy, but it is nonetheless highly responsive to steering inputs. It’s actually so quick to respond that I frequently turned in too early at many corners before I became acclimated to its taut reflexes. It’s worth noting that the HM’s 57.3-inch wheelbase is more than an inch shorter than that of a Honda CRF450R motocrosser.

Also playing a role in the HM’s agility is its relatively light weight. Though its 390-lb claimed dry weight will keep you off the double jumps at the MX track, it’s a significant 42 lbs lighter than the mechanically similar Multistrada 1100 we tested in our recent Air-Cooled Twins Naked comparo. The standard HM, without the S’s carbon bits and forged wheels, scales in with an extra 5 lbs.

Standard equipment on the S model is a stellar set of brakes. Up front are the same high-spec Brembo monobloc calipers seen on the 1098, made from a single casting for flex-free responses. Unlike the 1098’s massive 330mm rotors, the Hypermotard uses more modest 305mm discs that readily handle the challenge of the lower velocities of this type of bike. Initial bite is aggressive and can catch out the unwary, but aiding precise lever feel are braided-steel brake lines and a radial-pump master cylinder. The standard Hypermotard is fitted with cheaper two-piece Brembo calipers.

Another distinct aspect of the Ducati brand is the jingle-jangle of its dry-clutch design. A wet clutch such as the Multistrada’s is quieter than the HM’s, but that wouldn’t do for this bike. It, says Ducati, is “the popular preference of thousands of Ducatisti the world over.” In this application, the dry clutch has a 30% lighter pull thanks to a more efficient lever design and a grippier clutch-plate friction material that allows lighter clutch springs. It also weighs 3.5 lbs less than the oil-bathed clutch in the MTS. Further, the transmission’s primary drive gears have been upgraded with a new lightweight construction.

Pulling away from a stop, the Hypermotard’s dry clutch proved to be surprisingly easy to modulate via its radial-pump hydraulic master cylinder. It’s easy to balance the amount of drive through the clutch lever, allowing a gentle hover of the front tire across any intersection, and its rattling clutch plates aren’t as noisy as Ducatis of yore. Wheelies happen at will in first gear. A tug on the bars in second will do the same.

Unlike most current race-replica bikes, the Hypermotard isn’t hindered by overly tall gearing. In fact, its gearing is as short as any Ducati I’ve ridden. A briskly accelerating rider can short-shift the torquey V-Twin into fourth gear before reaching 50 mph, meaning that there is plenty of mechanical torque multiplication from the street-sensible gearing to maximize grunt from tight corner exits or that quick blast of power to escape the mindless cell-phone talker who wants to occupy your lane. For whatever reason, the Hypermotard’s gearbox proved to be smoother and less notchy than the ’box in our Multistrada test bike. Even neutral is easy to access.

Once up to speed, you’ll soon find out that 80 miles-per is the Hypermotard’s comfortable limit, so the bike’s short gearing isn’t an issue at that speed. Pushing beyond 80, the dirtbike-like riding position is fighting a losing battle with aerodynamics, so this won’t be the ideal mount for blasts across Nevada or Nebraska.

But steer the Hypermotard in the direction of a sinuous canyon road and you’ll find a road detangler unlike anything you’ve tried before. It flicks effortlessly into the tightest bends, then catapults out of corners with the engine’s extremely accessible powerband and street-friendly gearing working cooperatively, even if the peak output from the 1078cc two-valve V-Twin is humbled by any 600cc four-cylinder supersport from Japan Inc.

The tidy fuel tank/airbox cover seems oddly far away, and its small size is the main reason why the identical engine in the Multistrada is claimed to crank out 5 extra ponies. The small airbox strangles top-end power - one of the many compromises the bike’s design forces. Though we didn’t get a chance to dyno our HM, we expect about 75 horses at the rear wheel because our MTS produced 80. Torque should be unaffected, so all of the MTS’s 65 ft-lbs are in effect at a punchy 4800 rpm.

Not just an undersized airbox, the ’Motard is also hindered by a petite 3.28-gallon fuel tank that ensures you’ll be scoping out a Chevron station every 100 miles. This isn’t too much of an inconvenience, as the negligible support from the narrow seat will persuade an early rest stop anyway.

The HM’s saddle is yet another area in which ergonomic compromises were made for the sake of style. To look the part of a supermoto machine, the seat takes styling cues from dirtbikes, forcing a fairly lofty height that is said to be 33.3 inches but feels taller. It’s also sloped awkWardly forward. A narrow midsection allows legs a straight shot at the pavement, but rider comfort would be gratefully enhanced by a lower, wider seat. Surprisingly, the passenger seat is relatively cush, and integrated hand-holds built into the tailsection provide a welcome measure of security. And speaking of hands, we must applaud Ducati for its ingenious hand-guards that neatly incorporate LED turnsignals while providing shelter for digits.

As you might imagine, the Öhlins/Marzocchi combo offers supple suspension action, blessed with a generous 6.5 inches of travel up front and 5.6 at the rear. Although damping was initially on the stiff side, a couple of clicker adjustments smoothed out the ride nicely, especially after backing off the spring preload from the rear shock. Incomprehensively, the collar that compresses the shock’s spring is made from the same nylon material we noticed on the 1098S, not the seemingly more durable steel commonly used on most shocks.

The Hypermotard deserves kudos for its instrumentation that is amazingly compact for all its capabilities. The digital speedometer is easy to read and works in conjunction with a bar-graph LCD tachometer. A switch on the left handlebar can toggle through several different readouts, including a clock, oil temp, battery voltage, reserve fuel tripmeter and a lap-timer. In addition, the Hypermotard comes equipped to receive the Ducati Data Analyzer (DDA) data-acquisition system that is available as a Ducati Performance accessory. The tach is difficult to read at a glance, but the V-Twin’s clearly defined torque peak makes constant rev checks superfluous.

The Hypermotard’s final design compromise is the arrangement of its clever folding mirrors. While they offer a decent view behind (spoiled slightly by blurry images at certain rpm) and have a high novelty factor, they unnecessarily add to the bike’s already considerable width. Lane-splitting Californians will be bothered most, but anyone will be a bit peeved when they vibrate away from their intended settings. And you’ll need orangutan arms to be able to reach the right-side mirror with your left hand while riding. We can’t help but imagine a better system if the mirrors could be flipped upward vertically instead of out to the sides. (If some enterprising business out there invents such a system, I’ll be happy to accept a 5% cut.) A simpler solution would be to purchase a kit from Ducati that relocates the mirrors inboard of the grips for about $60.

But to bitch about things like floppy mirrors or a small fuel tank or a lack of touring comfort would be to miss the Hypermotard’s point altogether. This isn’t some homely multi-tool to gracelessly blend into commuter traffic (even if it requires less maintenance than older Ducs and comes with a two-year warrantee). Instead, the HM is a high-style scalpel that would be right at home slicing up the 318 tight corners of the Tail of the Dragon, blatting its rumbly V-Twin soundtrack across the mountains. And its visual presence and graceful design can’t help but make its rider feel special, as evidenced by the constant head-turning it caused during our rides.

But the most enduring personality trait of the Hypermotard is its unerring ability to excite a rider in a way that no other bike can match. It’s able to inspire naughtiness from anyone with a hint of mischief in their blood. If wheelies are part of your repertoire, this bike will entice you to pull a high, long one at every opportunity.

I know the kids down at the local skate park appreciated the Hypermotard’s wheelie ability. Just the right kind of crowd to understand the charms of a bike we consider to be one of our new favorites.

The Perfect Bike For…
...the connoisseur of motorcycles who already has at least two other bikes in the stable for more mundane riding, and someone who has a friendly relationship with law-enforcement personnel.

Source Motorcycle.Com