Kickin' Ss

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Kickin' SS

David Edwards

IT WAS ALMOST LIKE HAVING A LICENSE to speed, a get-out-of-jail-free card and a well-versed tour guide, all in one.

During CW’s visit with restoration ace Kenny Dreer at his Vintage Rebuilds operation in rural Oregon, a half-day ride was laid on. In all, 10 customers/friends showed up. I was happily installed on one of the shop’s scrumptious Norton specials (see “England Swings,” this issue). Point man for the afternoon’s armada was Jeff Lamarche, riding a 50,000-mile BMW K-bike with a remote-reservoir Öhlins, Staintune exhaust and Metzelers feathered to their very edges. Jeff’s other qualifications? Recently retired from the sheriff’s department, he knew every road in the county, where to go fast and where to slow down, and (most important) the first names of every peace officer in that part of the state. Oh, happy day!

Mid-ride, Kenny twisted my arm and transferred me to another of his rebuilds, a nicely tweaked late-1970s Ducati 900SS painted in a glossy yellow from the screaming-zonker end of the spectrum.

Now, the last time I’d ridden an oldstyle SS, more than a decade ago, it unceremoniously urpped itself and had to be trucked back home. Color me unimpressed.

Oh, I was aware of the history. I’d read Cycle magazine, after all, knew about the adventures of Cook Neilson and Phil Schilling and their beloved “California Hot Rod” 750SS project racer, even knew how to spell Ingenere Fabio Taglioni’s last namethough I still wasn’t abundantly clear on the whole desmodromic-valve concept he made famous. Introduced in 1973, the street-going SS was patterned after the hand-built Desmo 750s that went 1-2 a year before at the Imola 200, at the time one of the world’s biggest roadraces. With its clip-ons, double discs up front, solo seat cowl and air-splitting half-fairing, the SS can rightfully lay claim to being motorcycling’s first modern repli-racer. Two years later, a bore job took displacement up to 864cc and gave us the 900SS.

“A bike that stands at the farthest reaches of the sporting world-the definitive factory-built cafe-racer,” said Cycle of the progenitor 750SS back in 1974.

Not that the staff had blinders on when it came time for critical analysis.

“Bothered by details? You’ll be bothered by the Super Sport,” read the report. “Stress cracks spread from every attachment point of fiberglass to chassis. The bottom of the fuel tank leaks in two places. The front fender cannot be made to fit properly. The seat is tatty...The fairing fits asymmetrically. Rust is intruding through the surface of the frame’s rather shoddy paint (that doesn’t match the rather shoddy paint on the tank, seat or fender). The fuse box is mounted upsidedown and is open to the punishment of lousy weather...And there’s an honest-to-God Italian fly molded into the fiberglass fuel tank.”

Winning points? An engine with a “mellifluous, liquid idle” and “enormous lowand midrange torque... a pure delight to ride...it’s absolutely transfixing, from off-idle to midrange cruising to 9000-rpm (and more) acceleration.”

There was more, and it was almost metaphysical: “Every control on the SS, every point of contact between the bike and the rider, every running action and nuance is so silky, so refined and so unintrusive that you begin to feel after a time that somehow the SS is...magic.”

In a summation that would become mantra for Ducatisti the world over, the magazine proclaimed, “The True Believer can learn to live with the Super Sport...he can be thinking about the bike’s total familiarity with highspeed corners...he can marvel at a two-cylinder four-stroke 750cc engine that is capable of turning 10,000 rpm, mufflers and all, while he’s fussing with the desmo bits and pieces that permit such other-worldly engine speeds. And if a fly in the fiberglass distresses his appreciation for detail perfection, he can think to himself, well, hell-at least it’s an Italian fly, and an imported one at that.”

There are no flies on the thundering 900SS wedged between my cheeks. But while Dreer’s work is unequivocally concours-quality, it’s the Ducati’s performance that impresses most. This thing plucks itself off corners with an authority many modern bikes can’t muster, all the while treating anyone within earshot to a magnificent melody played doublQ-forte through its lightly muffled Conti pipes. And exofficer Jeff’s hard-chargin’ 1100 Beemer isn’t gaining much ground on the straights, either.

“What biplane did you yank this motor from?” I ask Kenny at a gas stop.

Compared to today’s sportbikes, with their stingy wheelbases, perpendicular steering heads and microscopic trail figures, the 900 might as well be an aircraft carrier. I wouldn’t want to hustle the SS through a series of tight esses with a GSX-R600 on my ass, but, boy, does it ever inhale highspeed sweepers! In fact, the Duck feels more at home heeled over at 80 per than it does running straight up and down.

Cycle magazine, 900SS road test, July, 1978: “At its vital center, the Desmo’s attraction is simple: It’s easy to go fast on the Ducati, and going fast is fun. If someone doesn’t enjoy riding briskly on such terms, he will never understand the Ducati and should not trouble himself to own one.”

Sitting in the corner of Dreer’s shop is a lone 900SS, derelict, waiting for someone to commission its rebuild. “I’ve already got some ideas for that one,” Kenny says, waving at the remains. “It’s going to be a bee-utee-ful bike.”

Uh-oh, I think I’m in trouble... □