Ducati celebrates its centenary this year, but the company only started making motorcycles after Allied bombers destroyed its Borgo Panigale factory, which was manufacturing munitions for the German military
USAF B-17 Flying Fortress bombers dropping their loads over their target during WW2
Ducati celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, because the company was founded on July 4, 1926.
However, the story of Ducati motorcycles really began on 12 October 1944, when 700 American bombers flew over Bologna and dropped 1300 tons of bombs on the city.
The main targets of the Flying Fortress and Liberator bombers were Bologna’s biggest factory, the Ducati plant at Borgo Panigale, as well as ammunition dumps and railway yards, which needed disabling to hinder the Germans as the Allies pushed northwards after landing in southern Italy.
This USAF mission – codenamed Operation Pancake – flattened the Ducati factory, which was manufacturing precision equipment for the Nazi military. This continued what Ducati had started in the 1920s, making radio, electrical and optical products.
Without Operation Pancake, Ducati would surely have continued its original business after the war. Instead, Ducati changed direction, building a new factory to meet massive post-war demand for low-cost transport, as the country switched from an agrarian society to an industrial society, which had workers needing transport to travel to the new factories.
Ducati first became famous in 1924 when Adriano Ducati invented a short-wave radio that established the first radio contact between Italy and the USA. Two years later, Adriano, his brothers and their father founded their first company: Societa Scientifica Radio Brevetti Ducati. By the 1930s, Ducati employed 11,000 people, making it the second-largest company in Italy.
SSRBD made condensers, radios, cameras, electric razors, jukeboxes, fridges, intercoms and calculating machines. During the Second World War, the Borgo Panigale factory manufactured munitions for the Italian and German militaries, most famously hi-tech Bimar (binocolo marino) binoculars used by the German navy in the Battle of the Atlantic and other theatres. Bimars were renowned for their remarkable optical quality, giving the Germans a real advantage in naval battles. This is why the factory had to be bombed.
The USAF bombed Ducati because they were making these high-tech Bimar (binocolo marino) binoculars for the German navy
At the end of the war Ducati management searched for a new line of business that would secure the company’s future. They found their answer 200 miles away in Turin, where car-tuning shop Siata (Società Italiana Auto Trasformazioni Accessori) had engineered a 50cc engine, called Cucciolo (Puppy).
Siata didn’t have the manufacturing facilities to keep up with demand, so it sold the rights and tooling to the Ducati family, which took out a government loan to build a new factory in Borgo Panigale.
The tiny Cucciolo engine was designed to be bolted to a bicycle frame, the cheapest way to join the rush to motorisation. By coincidence, Soichiro Honda was doing the same thing at the same time in Japan, using auxiliary bicycle engines which had started life as military generators.
What follows is the timeline of Ducati’s motorcycle story, all the way from 50cc bicycle engines to becoming the dominant force in MotoGP, with six constructors’ crowns and four riders’ titles since 2020.
1952 – Ducati takes the obvious next step, creating its first complete motorcycle, the Cucciolo, which is a huge success. Inevitably, Ducati starts racing the Cucciolo to promote its speed and reliability.
1954 – By now, motorcycles and engines are Ducati’s priority, so the company needs a talented chief engineer. The man it hires is without doubt the most important character in the marque’s history.
Ducati poaches Fabio Taglioni from Mondial, the Milan manufacturer that had won the first three 125cc world championships in 1949, 1950 and 1951.
Taglioni’s first great Ducati is the Marianna 125, which wins the company’s reputation for high-performance through victories in Italy’s great road-races, like the Milan-Taranto.
1958 – More designs quickly flow from Taglioni’s drawing board, including his first desmodromic engine, the triple-cam 125cc single of 1956, which wins Ducati’s first grand prix victories in 1958.
Ducati’s first grand prix team of the late 1950s, with its desmo 125cc single. Ducati removed the Ferrari-style prancing horse logo after Enzo Ferrari had words with Fabio Taglioni (left)
Taglioni is encouraged to adopt desmo technology by his friend Enzo Ferrari, who had been impressed by the performance and reliability of Mercedes’ desmodromic W196 Formula 1 car, winner of the 1954 F1 world championship.
“The main purpose of the system is to force the valve to follow the distribution diagram as closely as possible,” Taglioni explains. “Energy losses are negligible, performance curves are more uniform and reliability is improved.”
However, Taglioni and Ferrari don’t always see eye to eye, most memorably when Taglioni adorns his Ducati race bikes with prancing horses, paying tribute to Italy’s favourite First World War pilot Count Francesco Baracca, who had flown with Taglioni’s father and was killed in the final months of the war.
Baracca had been in the cavalry before becoming a so-called knight of the sky, hence the horse logo. Baracca’s mother bestowed the logo on Ferrari, so Enzo isn’t happy when it appears on Ducatis. He has a quiet word with Taglioni, who agrees to stop using the logo.
1970 – Ducati has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy numerous times, forcing it to adapt to survive. During the 1960s it built Triumph Herald cars, during the 1980s it assembled Ferrari engines for Lancia and at various times, Ducati manufactured diesel engines for industrial and agricultural uses.
In October 1970 the company’s government-appointed bosses decide Ducati must change direction, away from its single-cylinder 125, 250, 350 and 450cc road and race bikes, because the motorcycle market is undergoing a seismic transformation.
This is the dawn of the age of the superbike. Honda’s CB750, Kawasaki’s Z1 and Triumph’s Trident have just hit the road, so Taglioni is instructed to create a 750cc road bike. Taglioni builds his first 90-degree v-twins, the legendary desmo GT750 road bike and a 500cc GP bike, a promotional tool for the 750, because there’s no 750 racing at this time.
Ducati’s first MotoGP bike, the non-desmo 500cc v-twin of 1971 and 1972. Bruno Spaggiari leads MV Agusta’s Giacamo Agostini during a non-championship Adriatic coast event
1971 – Ducati contests its first MotoGP races with Taglioni’s non-desmo 500, but the bike isn’t competitive, because the championship is being conquered by a new breed of high-performance two-strokes, so the project is quietly dropped. Instead Taglioni is instructed to build a race bike around his GT750 engine to contest the new US-style Formula 750 racing class that’s coming to Europe and is due to become a world series in 1973.
1972 – Briton Paul Smart rides a GT750-based race bike to victory in the Imola 200, based on America’s Daytona 200. Another big day in the Ducati legend.
However, Ducati never wins a single F750 world championship race, because that class is also conquered by two-strokes.
1978 – Ducati waits seven years for its next big day, achieved in the new TT F1 class, created in 1977 to save the Isle of Man TT, which had lost grand prix status the previous year. The TT F1 rules are written to keep two-strokes out.
In June 1978, 1960s legend Mike Hailwood comes out of retirement to win the single-race TT F1 world championship aboard a factory-supported 900 twin, based on the 900SS launched the previous year.
Henceforth all Ducati successes will be achieved in classes that handicap or ban two-strokes.
1981 – Ducati’s next racing successes come in the TT F2 class, with Briton Tony Rutter racing a desmo 600 v-twin to four TT F2 world titles, from 1981 to 1984. But once again the company is close to bankruptcy. Cagiva owners Claudio and Gianfranco Castiglioni step in to save the company. Initially they plan to replace the Ducati name with Cagiva – heresy!
1986 – Believe it or not, Ducati’s current technical era begins in an endurance race, the 1986 Bol d’Or 24 hours, when it races its first water-cooled, four-valve v-twin race bike. Another crucial Ducati moment.
No surprise that Ducati went racing with its very first motorcycle, the Cucciolo, in the late 1940s
No surprise that Ducati went racing with their very first motorcycle, the Cucciolo, in the late 1940s
The 750 endurance bike is the basis of the 851, the company’s first World Superbike machine, which former MotoGP rider Raymond Roche rides to third in the inaugural 1988 WSBK championship.
1990 – Roche wins Ducati’s first WSBK title aboard the new 888 and retains it the following year aboard an upgraded 888.
1994 – Ducati launches the 916, the Duke that changes everything. Essentially, two things save Ducati: WSBK and the 916. WSBK transforms the company from a struggling niche manufacturer into a highly desirable global brand, via the 916 and its derivatives.
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Mat Oxley
2001 – Ducati wins its 10th WSBK constructors title and announces it is building a motorcycle for the new 990cc four-stroke MotoGP series, which starts the following year.
That summer, I ask Ducati boss Claudio Domenicali what the bike would be like. “It will be red,” he says. “And it will have an L-engine and trellis frame… I expect our ‘super twin’ to have as much power as the Honda or Yamaha, and from what I know already, maybe more.” ‘Super twin’ is Domenicali’s code for a four!
2003 – The Desmosedici finishes on the podium at its first race, the season-opening Japanese GP, and wins its sixth, the Catalan GP, an extraordinary accomplishment for a manufacturer that hasn’t been in GP racing for decades.
2007 – Ducati wins its first MotoGP riders’ title, with Casey Stoner, and its first constructors’ crown.
2013 – Gigi Dall’Igna joins Ducati at the end of the year. He leaves Aprilia to transform Ducati’s Desmosedici, which has fallen on hard times. In 2014, he reorganises Ducati Corse, then in 2015 he designs an all-new Desmosedici, which step by step becomes a MotoGP dominator.
2016 – Ducati wins its first MotoGP race since 2010, when Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso finish one-two in the Austrian GP. The Dall’Igna magic is starting to work, although Ducati is also helped by MotoGP’s switch to spec Marelli electronics and Michelin tyres.
2020 – Ducati wins its second MotoGP constructors’ crown, the first of six consecutive titles.
2024 – Ducati wins its 100th MotoGP race at Misano, when Enea Bastianini beats Jorge Martin on the last lap of the Emilia-Romagna GP. And the company seals its 20th WSBK constructors’ title.
