Desmo Fever

Desmo fever

LEANINGS

VAMPIRES ARE EASY. I THOUGHT AS I hung up the phone. You simply drive a wooden stake through their hearts and they’re gone for good.

Ducatis are another matter. Own just one, and you’re stuck forever. Not only is the bike itself physically hard to kill, but, if you make the mistake of selling the thing, you’re doomed to go around with two small puncture wounds on the neck, marked for life.

The cause of all this dark brooding was a phone call from my friend Russ Lyon. Just when I was getting my Mastercharge whittled down to a size that made it vulnerable to attack in a dark alley, Russ called to say he was selling off some of his vehicles to pay for new equipment in his growing metal-casting business. Would I be interested in buying his 1979 silverand-blue Ducati 900 Super Sport?

I choked back one of those short laughs that Woody Allen does so well—half cough and half kick in the solar plexus. Would I be interested in a 900SS? Was the Pope interested in Catholicism? Of course I’d be interested, I told him. But my wife and I just bought a house. With bad plumbing and a leaky roof, beneath which lived two overweight cats with an entrenched taste for your finer brands of cat food. Our vet owned two Porsches. Money, in other words, might be a problem.

Russ suggested a fair price for the bike, so I told him I’d give it some thought, talk it over, take a few cold showers and call him back.

The rest of the day was shot, of course, for any useful work. I spent what remained of the afternoon pacing back and forth in my office, gazing out the window, digging old Desmo road tests out of my magazine files and dusting off framed photos of another silver-and-blue 900 Super Sport. The one I sold three years ago. That’s right. I used to have one myself, and if I’d had the good sense to hold onto it, I might have avoided a repeat of this whole emotional wringer. I can't say that I wasn’t warned.

I sold the bike to raise money for a Formula Ford during my last bad attack of race fever, which manifests itself every three or four years as a witless, lemming-like urge to race cars or bikes. Or something. When I announced to the world that the Duck was for sale, reaction from friends was swift.

“Do you want me to come over there right now,’’ my pal Wargula asked, “and give you a really hard kick in the butt, just so you won’t have to do it to yourself later?”

Phil Schilling, a friend and editor of Cycle magazine, said, “You don't sell Ducatis, Egan. You buy Ducatis. It’s a simple rule of life.”

Russ Lyon said, “A Ducati 900SS is a motorcycle you should never sell. It’s the only perfect statement of everything that’s important in a sportbike.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said, I know, I know. Then I went ahead and put an ad for the bike in the Sunday L.A. Times, for $3700. Sunday morning, a guy from Hollywood called and said, “I'll be right down. Don't sell the bike. Do you need cash? That could be a problem on a Sunday, but I'll see what I can do.”

That evening, two guys with a certain Miami Vice flair about them showed up at our door. One was the potential buyer, the other his Ducatiknowledgeable friend and advisor. Both took the bike for short test rides. When the would-be buyer came back from his ride, he said, “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure it’s running right. It seems to be missing a little bit when you rev it past...” “Don't be a jerk,” the friend interrupted. “The bike’s perfect. It’s the best-running Ducati I’ve ever seen. Give him the money.”

And he did. Out of a brown paper bag. Thirty-seven hundred dollars in fives, tens and twenties, all laid out in piles of hundreds and groups of thousands on the living room coffee table. I felt as though I should have a snubnose .38 on the table and someone peering out through the drapes for Trouble.

They loaded the Ducati on a motorcycle trailer and drove away. The bike looked good sitting up there on the trailer, lean and narrow, and I knew as I watched it dissolve into darkness that I’d made a mistake.

Since that night. I’ve had plenty of time to think about my old bike, and Russ Lyon's words. For me, and my own peculiar tastes, the Ducati 900SS Desmo (like its even cleaner and rarer forerunner, the 750SS) truly is just about ideal. It’s nowhere near as fast or sophisticated in chassis design as the current crop of fully faired superbikes, but it has a lovely, long-legged, visible engine, superb brakes, amazing high-speed stability and a timeless purity of line that make it a sort of irreducible statement of what a motorcycle can be. It exemplifies the motto of its designer, Ing. Fabio Taglioni: “Simplicity, carried to its ultimate extreme.”

No one needs a Ducati 900SS, of course. Unless you’re racing in the Battle of the Twins, it’s just a satisfying means to take a very specialized type of Sunday morning ride. In fact,

I put fewer than 3000 miles on mine in the three years I had it. It’s a motorcycle that spends a lot of time waiting, while more practical bikes are ridden. In many ways, the Ducati Desmo is as much an idea, a place in the mind, as it is a motorcycle.

So the question is, can a person actually buy a state of mind? Is it really worth the sacrifice and expense to own an idea?

I’m not sure. It’s a complex metaphysical matter that I’ll have to take up with my loan officer at the bank. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, if I can’t get in any sooner. —Peter Egan