Terminator

TERMINATOR

FORZA ITALIA

Pro Italia's diabolical Monster

LIKE A ROCK BAND THAT JUST LOST ITS FRONT MAN, PRO ITALIA MOTORS IS A shop in need of a new hit. For the last decade, Southern California’s premier European motorcycle establishment was managed by Earl Campbell, a man known for his mouth-watering customs featured in magazines worldwide. We’ll spare you the sordid details of the breakup, but when Campbell left Pro Italia to run Lyle Lovett’s shop in Houston, Texas, new manager Bill Nation realized he had some big suspenders to fill.

Fortunately, one of Nation’s partners is Paul Taylor, creator ot the worldrenowned Saxon Triumph BEARS racer. The two put their heads together and decided the best way to prove the shop was still a wellspring of enthusiasm was to build an attention-getting project bike.

“We wanted to show that we were still in business, that we still had the connections,” says Taylor. “We wanted to make a statement.”

To that end, Taylor enlisted British designer John Keogh to help him re-design a Ducati Monster. But Keogh had an ulterior motive, as he confirms. “My original idea was to be a ‘spoiler’ for Pierre Terblanche,” he says. “Ducati was supposed to reveal an updated Monster last year, so in that respect, I feel it holds good.’ Indeed it does. With the possible exception of the airbrushed Terminator logo on the fuel tank, inspired by an advertisement for a new ride at Universal Studios, the styling is sensational. And the closer you look, the more you appreciate the details.

For example, did you notice that the bike wears a single-sided swingarm? Or were you distracted by the paired silencers, which look as though they were pilfered from a GP two-stroke?

Mating the 916 swingarm to the Monster engine cases was a tedious task that entailed replicating the former’s external frame braces and relocating the shock up under the seat. The auto-racing community contributed mightily to the endeavor, as John MacQuillan of the Jordan F-l team made the structural supports in carbon-fiber while Indycar specialist Andy Bondio fabricated the shock mounts and the stainless exhaust with billet-aluminum mufflers.

Working from Keogh’s sketches, Taylor laid the fiberglass bodywork himself. No fewer than four projector-beam headlamps give the front of the bike a menacing look that balances the four LED arrays (two red for taillights, two amber for turnsignals) in the rear. Great pains were taken to give the bike a clean, uncluttered appearance; for example, the wiring harness hangs from tie-wraps riveted to the backside of the silver-painted frame rails.

The front end is worthy of a Superbike, with Attack Racing adjustable-offset billet triple-clamps holding Showa forks from a 916 and PFM six-piston brakes. A set of Pro Italia’s own adjustable billet clip-ons runs GP-spec Brembo levers.

Engine-wise, the Terminator is standard Ducati fare, with lightly massaged internals, naked cambelts and a de rigeuer vented carbon clutch cover. Twin 39mm Keihin flat-slides help the engine chum out 77.1 horsepower and 62.6 foot-pounds ot torque—plenty of power to propel the flyweight, 364-pound machine. But the most earth-shattering thing about the engine is the sound it really does have a set of Indycar pipes!

What’s next for Pro Italia? To hear Nation and Taylor tell it, it’ll be business as usual. While there was early talk of producing a limited run of Terminators, they now say they have no plans to sell the bike or any of the one-off parts. But considering Pro Italia’s celebrity clientele, it'll probably only be a matter of time until someone talks them into producing it. Like Schwarzenegger said in the movie, the Terminator will be back. -Brian Catterson