The Day That Saved Ducati! Its First Successful V-Twin Superbike wins at the Daytona of Italy, 1972

The Day That Saved Ducati! Its First Successful V-Twin Superbike wins at the Daytona of Italy, 1972 Cycle World Podcast · Jul 1, 2026

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Car

Ducati 750 Imola

A famous racing motorcycle built by Ducati in 1972. It used a unique engine design that didn't vibrate like other bikes of the era, allowing it to win a massive race and save the company from going out of business.

Car

Honda CB750

A revolutionary motorcycle released by Honda in 1969 that changed the industry forever. It was fast, reliable, didn't leak oil, and popularized the four-cylinder engine layout.

Car

Triumph Trident

An early British three-cylinder motorcycle built to compete with fast Japanese bikes. It made good power but shook a lot and had an older engine design that limited how fast it could spin.

Person

Fabio Taglioni

The genius engineer who designed Ducati's most famous engines, introducing the high-revving valve designs and V-twin layouts that make Ducatis sound and perform the way they do.

Term

desmodromic

A special way of opening and closing engine valves using mechanical arms instead of metal springs. This stops the valves from getting confused or failing at really high speeds.

Concept

90 degree V-twin

An engine with two cylinders arranged in an 'L' shape at a perfect 90-degree angle. This layout naturally cancels out engine shaking, making the ride incredibly smooth without needing extra heavy parts to stop vibrations.

Car

Toyota A90

The Toyota Supra is a fast, two-door sports car made by the Japanese company Toyota. It is built for people who want a quick, stylish vehicle that is fun to drive on winding roads.

Term

primary shaking force

The main shaking feeling you get from an engine as the pistons move up and down once per turn. Getting rid of this force makes the engine run much smoother.

Part

sandcast cases

Engine cases made by pouring hot liquid metal into molds made of sand. It's an old-school, expensive way of making parts, but it makes them stronger and easier to customize for racing.

Car

Ducati 750 Super Sport

An incredibly rare and beautiful street version of Ducati's winning race bike. It is famous for its bright green painted frame and is worth a fortune to collectors today.

Car

Jaguar Xk

The Jaguar XK is a luxury sports car made by the British brand Jaguar, starting in the late 1940s. It was designed to look elegant while driving much faster than standard cars of its era.

Term

squish band

A tiny, tight space at the top of the engine cylinder. When the piston goes up, it squeezes the fuel and air out of this tight spot, mixing it up like a mini-tornado so it burns faster and cleaner.

Car

Dodge Aries

The Dodge Aries is a basic, budget-friendly family car sold by the American brand Dodge during the 1980s. It was designed to be affordable, practical, and fuel-efficient.

Car

BMW R90S

A classic, fast BMW motorcycle from the 1970s with cylinders that stick straight out to the sides. It was famous for its beautiful paint job and for winning major races in America.

LIVE

Hey, welcome to the cycle world podcast. I'm mark where the editor-in-chief and I'm with Kevin Cameron. He's our technical editor. I

Could say what's up guys welcome back to the channel, but I won't

Yes, I shall pass over the fact that

We're glad you're here

This week's topic is is super interesting. I think for certainly for me and Kevin and we hope for you too Kevin

Kevin was at the 1972 Imola 200 where Ducati brought its first racing

Let's say successful racing between

they had some

Bikes before that that were twins, but this is the one that they showed up with the Imola 200 the Daytona of Europe as they call it and

Everything seemed to go pretty good for them

And then suddenly Ducati was a builder of world-class

Superbike between 750s. They were in a in an era of

Then explosion of big bike sales, you know Honda's CB 750 had changed the market and

You know, they had crept up in displacement. They had 450 singles that would vibrate across the floor on their center stands

Lots going on but the Imola 200 really say it's we often refer to it in our conversations here as

The week that saved Ducati or the day that saved Ducati

Ducati's

Ducati's been on the brink of financial disaster many times in its history and circa 70

It was kind of in that if things were not going great and they were

really needing a Hail Mary and something to

Define their future and didn't they get it Kevin? I mean it really it was a fabulous thing

Because it because if it had been a year later

They couldn't have done it because the rules changed to allow the 350 Yamaha's that were blitzing

Daytona

In 72 it was Don Imdi and in 73 it would be Arno Sarnan

Who won the 73

Imola 200 so

It was it was like the Battle of Midway, which for the American side was just a

Fabulous conjunction of

Things without which nothing could have happened successfully and yet all those factors were there and

they functioned

The two Ducati's were running out of fuel at the end. They were the riders were having to try to slosh fuel over to the

pepcock and

They're sputtering and banging and you're thinking they're gonna stop at any moment, but they didn't they kept going

Yeah, Bruno Diari. Yeah, Paul smart. I love how Paul smart got the job. We'll get to that

But Paul's part one. I think he had maybe a little more fuel or he was more proactive and

He was planning a last lapper. Yeah, he could have been because because

Spadgiari was an older man at the time and

Whereas Paul was an active racer and

Active racers always have a last-lap plan if they're close to somebody some place

They think he's weak and they're strong

Some place where his bike doesn't work as well as might be where the track will spring snap

And you're suddenly second well Bruno was Bruno Spadgiari was said to be running on one cylinder

He was still running he got second place. Yeah, and they like the the lore is

They were doing well. They showed up and they were getting good lap times right from the beginning and

They were told not to race each other until the last five laps

Good luck with that. Yeah, so

race racers

It's it's something that every racer knows that if there are two bikes

Leading and they start carving one another up. It slows them down

Look out for the person in third place. What if it's I oh Gura

Who goes so well at the end, you know, yeah

You and this is the kind of thing that racers have well in mind throughout the race. There's they've got all this stuff

listed for their own

Happiness and preservation of wealth so I wouldn't be at all surprised if Paul had a last-lap plan

because riders tend to do that

It was it was a wonderful day the night before

my rider cliff car and

Paul Smart were standing in front of Ducati's glass van and

It must have been quite late because it was actually dark. This is April and

Paul had had just arrived and serve, you know seemed

Slightly out of breath and he'd just come from a from a familiarization meeting and he's saying

The the RPM they're telling me to shift at it. Is it even possible and

It's safe to some other tremendous number and of course

Smart was accustomed to things like the Triumph Trident

Triumph told dick man. This is an 8200 RPM engine and dick man privately said to himself feels more like a

7800 RPM engine to me and

People who grew up racing maxes, you know, the 7200 was it

so this

Aspect of the Ducati was something unfamiliar to all these people

And it was entirely intentional

Because after all the through through of trying to make bigger motorcycles to satisfy

the growing market which the following year was going to be bombed out by Z1 and

Then by Suzuki GS's

It was it was a time when

Everyone knew there was big money to be made in big bikes who was going to get it and

The problem had been vibration and of course for a British twin

Vibration the bigger they made the pistons of more it shook and the bigger the balance factor they had to use and

There were strict limits on RPM plus was a push-rod engine which has special problems. It has

All valves are operated by springs

That is the mechanism is springy the cams are springy. If you have rock arms, they're

They're springy

But

What was wonderful was that

Talioni

Used wisdom to make his choices. First of all, he got rid of the vibration by going with the 90 degree angle the V angle

This is the famous dr. T. We got a we have to rewind and we just assumed talioni. Everyone knows talio

Yes, he was a he he introduced desmo went on the 125 in the 50s

And he was a fan of desmo and he was solving a problem because valve springs were horrible

And he and he didn't want to have valve spring problems and he was like, hey, this is clever

And they stuck with it and they did make spring heads, you know

They had 350 singles with spring heads and stuff

But uh, it was always there at ducati and dr. T was a purveyor of desmodromic

Well, he had made the the trecomi the the the three cam

125 and they had embarrassed the big companies in italy with this the ability of this single

Just revved rpm that no one else could reach at the time not if they wanted to finish

And so

It is frequently said that he took the 90 degree

cylinder angle from the apollo police bike

But the fact is that everyone had known for decades that a 90 degree v-twin

If counter weighted to 100 percent of one cylinder's reciprocating weight

resulted in

Basically zero primary shaking force

Primary means once per crankshaft revolution

There were secondary vibrations

One quarter of the amplitude so

Can be neglected in many cases

So in in that choice

He had defeated all of the motorcycles that were behind them at the end at imla

Because none of them could reach the rpm

That the uh imla bike could because

Most of its vibration had been made self-canceling

Now

The triumph triple

Had a decent primary balance, but it had a tremendous robot shaking and

As previously noted

Uh, was it an 80 a 7800 rpm engine or an 8200 rpm engine?

Yeah, pausing for a moment the one of the reasons we're doing the podcast on the imla 200

Is that I recently got time with mecom auctions to see

One of the original eight bikes we have photographs in the archive from the factory

Of the eight 750 ml is and I got to see some of the characteristics of the motorcycle

and why that's important at this moment kevin is because

I got to look at the tachometer originally and originally

a valet attack

Marked with a red line. So it had a tick

On the tach face at about

9300

So it had a like a piece of tape at 9300, but then it had a red dot

95 97 it was kind of a big red dot

So it covered some rpm

But yeah, it was it was revving to uh, you know close to 10 000 rpm and and and smarty was just absolutely gob smacked

And by the way, it didn't shake, you know like norton commandos, you know parallel any of those parallel twins

Holy moly like without rubber mounting

You can't even see when you rub that stuff on it's nuts

Basically what it was was a new era in rpm unattainable

By the previous motorcycles

You could argue that uh butler and smith managed to get the flat twin

Their small one to rev to 10 000

Where were they they weren't at this race so

Um, and it took it took them time to achieve that

Well, it was also 1970 was a big a big turning point for for this whole industry

One of the points that you made

Sorry, but one of the points that you made you said well, you know, where was being but you know

Where was butler and smith they weren't at this race?

Where were the yamaha twins and as you said in our our conversations leading up to this podcast?

with some foresight they

They eliminated bikes with displacements less than 500 ccs

Just to make sure that it wasn't a walkover right so

But maybe it was intentional, but they'd been to datona

They looked at datona and they saw what happened with the little two stroke

And so they made this forming the 750 race truly

Dr. Talioni went to datona in march to look at what was going on and talk to people. So anyway

Okay, we've got more rpm than the opposition

Now the question is can we fill the cylinders at that speed?

and

This had been a problem that they'd worked on for years and with the singles

Because the imola twin was conceptually

Uh a pair of their uh desmo 350 cylinders

Plus a little fluff up with the boring bar

Uh on a common crankcase actually on a common crank pin connecting rods side by side

Not harley and uh rolls royce merlin style fork and blade

They already had worked on the problem of filling the desmo 350 cylinder

They had a good idea of what kind of cam profiles would be required

And the cam profile for the imola lifted the

42 millimeter intake and what was a 38 millimeter exhaust

To an astonishing percentage of valve head area over 30 percent

Which in terms of I call that specific lift

When i'm thinking about it myself, but it basically relates the lift to the valve head

And in the ancient times, I won't mention

When they were but 17 percent of valve head diameter was the thing and by

Uh the 1920s early 30s 25 percent. So it went like that

So to have 13 millimeters lift was an adventure that was that was big stuff and

The cams that were used had vast amount of overlap

And uh the exhaust cam opened very early

Um so that it was

It was

Not that far from from a manks in that sense

so uh

And then 40 millimeter special um Delordos

And these heads were welded the ports were reshaped and they were

Shined up

And so they had a pretty good idea of

What kind of poke they could expect and they didn't expect anyone else to bring that amount

Plus the fact there was the racetrack right up the road

And you'll also see in descriptions of this motor that had sandcast cases

There's a good reason to use sandcast

Honda

For years has used sandcast cases in moto gp because

One they can be heat treated

Old style die casting when you try to heat treat it or try to weld it

The gas dissolved in it causes it to

Look like a stressor's delight sandwich it just comes up in layers

Exfoliates

So a sandcast crankcase ducati still uses sandcast crankcases

uh for special projects and

So there are real advantages to this

Well, um

Well, that was one of the just quickest sides standing at the rate

I was at blackhawk farms with me come and they had a

A green frame 70 supersport 1974 and then they had this imola 200 bike

And the cases on the imola 200 bike clearly sandcast

No seams just there it was and you walk over to the production bike

Which was die cast perfectly good for a production motorcycle

But you could see all the seams of the die on it, you know, just could can see the difference in it

Yes, this was neat sand castings have a certain

Patina they are

They casting has a lovely surface texture. I'm speaking now strictly

Out of artistic appreciation, but it is it so nice to look at it has an organic feel to it

It has a natural

I don't know it does it has a natural ambiance to it that a billet case does not, you know

Like billets are don't get me wrong watching machine tool, you know

Tooling marks or a our sharp tool that does machining that leaves no marks that no visible marks

That's that is an art in itself. But uh, yeah

Sand casting, you know, I just see uh

What I like about the foundry kevin is that usually the guys in the foundry are at least as smart as the engineers

Designing what they want to have cast the guys. They know what can be made the guys in the foundry always

fixed stuff

Yeah, they fixed up quietly

They just say well that's no no again. They just but it looks very 1900 because here comes two guys

They've got a a long rod between them with a circular opening in it in which the crucible containing liquid aluminum

Is being carried and one of them has a tea handle and when they get

to the to the uh mold

And they get lined up and they pour this stuff. It is like meat evil

These are wizards. Yeah

I wonder what room with brilliant

illumination of their faces a couple gallons, you know a gallon. I don't know probably

Several liters of liquid aluminum

I wonder what aluminum it was because I just found out today after all these years of

Playing with jaguars. I just found out today that the cylinder the aluminum cylinder had introduced in 1948 on the jaguar xk engine

Introduced in 48 that was used in a production car until 1987

That was used in racing in the 60s successfully continued to win

Uh was made out of rr 56

Yes, excuse me rr 50. It was rolls royce 50 developed for pistons by rolls royce

Uh in wartime

Or even before the war. Yeah, but they were they were always

Yeah, it was for the trophy the uh the air race

Yeah, the schneider schneider cup anyway

Anyway, there's so much delightful stuff to think of but back to back to the imelibike

Let's see. What is it?

Quite over square

with great big valves at an 80 degree

included angle which is

Quite wide so the combustion chamber was deep

And there was supposedly a 516 squish band around the outside

But the vertical clearance that they gave it was and this is not dynamic

This is measured clearance because there's going to be rod stretch

Uh was 0.9 to 1.0 millimeters

Whereas what you would like in a dynamic sense is more like 0.7

the connecting rods

Are alloy steel

They have two reinforcing ribs around the small end and two reinforcing ribs

around the big end

These are not split and bolted

these are uh old style and the

Uh connecting rods cook nelson watched

A machining center at ducati

Make connecting rods of this type it took half an hour

So this is one of the pressures

that was

Acting on ducati at this time because

Even though the imelibike was tremendously successful in bringing a shower of attention and orders

To the company what they really needed was a motorcycle easier to produce

Because with the shaft and bevels drive to the camshafts

Requiring quite a lot of setup

You do the shim stack you reassemble everything you put uh transfer die on

You rotate through and you look at the pattern of contact between gear teeth

No looks like lunch is going to be late today

And you do it again

Until you get it the way it's supposed to be

Don't want too much backlash

You have to allow somewhere there's a there's a sliding coupling in the tower shaft that allows the cylinder to

Expand with heat more than the rod which is steel

And so here are these two beautiful rods which take too long to make

And as we know

The strange

Set of non uh desmo heads

Made for their 500 gp twin

Had tooth belt drive pirelli belts

And at the time belts were in their infancy

So there were some failures and dr. Talioni was

Don't don't mess with that nonsense. It's not not ready for prime time

But when when mark and I talked with a gates engineer, and this is quite recently he said

Every every little whip stitch we'd come up with a modification to our process

That resulted in stronger and stronger belts part number

Was there how you know the pitch the width uh the total belt length and so forth

But the belts were getting better and better

so that later when uh talioni was free to address after the this racing surge

Was put an end to spironian and uh milvio were

Told to go elsewhere and we're not going to spend money on racing anymore now

They were the guys kind of running they were the guys running the company at the time

Yes, they were they were given the task of make something out of this company

And they thought correctly that racing might do it

Spruance launched all his planes

At midway and they arrived over the japanese carriers while they were changing their uh armament

And four of them were sunk, but if they'd arrived a little earlier or a little later

Who knows and this is this is the wonderful thing about this this

Imola thing because

Certainly talioni acted wisely whipping up a

functional racer

out of virtually nothing it was it was uh like march 20th 1970 that he first started putting some ideas on paper

And here we are two years later

with this

Racer that had sufficient maturity to win

at the first go

Not bad

Makes the old man look pretty good. It's possible, you know to to think of talioni if you arrived on this scene

during the uh massimobordy era the

four valve liquid cooled

Otto valvo le

It's easy to think of

talioni as

The last of the dying breed the representative technology passed and so forth never mind that

The things that he did to create this motorcycle were clever. Here's an example

Did you want to say something?

It perfectly matched it perfectly matched a moment in time the the

There is genius in the bike there is cleverness and it he worked hard in the time he had allotted

And he used the ideas and resources at hand to make a thing that did the job

in the perfect

Time to do the job. So it's

It's wonderful and I would just to point out the 750 gt is what was out there

There there was a spring head version 750 gt. It had amyl carburetors and it was a really very nice street bike

I tested one uh in later years and that's sort of

That was the the basis or the you know, the foundation for the move to the amyl bikes. So

Okay now for

One of the little examples that I like to give of talioni's attention to important details

You on this racetrack

They wanted acceleration

It was not a top speed track

Daytona is not a top speed track

Generally you gear for the infield and over rev on the bowl

But what he did was he knew that nothing accelerates like compression ratio

Because compression ratio takes the pressure curve

The pv of the cylinder and just

raises it

Raises the whole thing compression helps everywhere

How could he run high compression? How high could he go?

In an air cooled engine with a fair size, you know, like three inch bore

well

What is normally done is you raise the compression ratio until you are

Standing on detonation's door mat

And then you have to back up a little bit because you need detonation margin if you plan to finish

And I think that some of those, uh, british four strokes at Daytona just knocked themselves out

So the thing with detonation is you want to reduce the cylinder head temperature

and you want to hold the

unburned

Last parts of the charge to burn at a high temperature for the shortest possible time

That means you want fast burn

So he adds a second spark plug a 10 millimeter and end up with 34 degrees btvc

Which for an engine with a with a

birdbath

Deep combustion chamber and piston dome. It's not bad. That's not bad at all. Yeah

but then

Like norton realizing that they in 1953 that they had to

Provide special cooling for the exhaust valve guides

Spiral passages a little heat exchanger on one of the form fresh chassis down tubes

Talioni adds

an oil cooler

And the output from the oil cooler is led to the cylinder heads

It is a head cooler

Now this is this is good thinking

That's what harley called strategic cooling when they started adding the little water passages to the touring bikes. That's a detroit phrase. Yeah strategic

strategic cooling

They were doing that in world war one aircraft engines. We just have to put in those big sixes that they ran

The the water the cooling water

went to the exhaust valve seat regions from inside the water passage and you know the

The water jacket in the heads so that

The valve seats were cooled first

And of course most of the cooling of the valve comes from the seat. So anyway, here we are

Talioni decides

heads are running too hot

um, or he says

Maybe I could eke out a little more compression if I could reduce the cht cylinder head temperature

I don't doubt that there are other things of the same nature that he did but we don't we don't know what they are because

They're not part of the literature

Maybe ian faloon knows all this neat stuff. I hope so

somebody should

Influence the noted ducati historian and if you think you have a 750 ml bike you call ian

And let ian take a really good look at it and compare its details with those of period photography

And uh and his vast storehouse of knowledge and obsession

You know professional musician who loves loves loves ducati's ducati historian

Um, I can't remember if it was the cello or the oboe

Do you know I don't no, but he crashed he crashed on a I think it was a track day

But he crashed and he mangled his hands in it like it influenced his ability to play but he really

Loved motorcycles as we do

yes

Because we know so many people personally who have had to overcome

distressing injuries

to ride again

Because we want to yes, so uh

Ducati's gear department was a capable one supposedly they had no trouble running up whatever ratios

uh turned out to be best

And of course, you know that when modern day race teams arrive at a circuit where they haven't raced before

They have conferences after each practice and decide

which ratios

To put in the six

locations

These imla bikes were

five speed the ground pre 500s

were

six speeds

so um

It's a it's a

The

Disguised race bike it looks production. It has that gaudy

metal flake tank with the see-through stripe so you can see if there's any gas left

I don't think there's much in there

and uh

There were modifications everywhere

It had 278 millimeter

Little tiki as we see it now

um from the the

340 era

iron iron discs with lockheed calipers

and

29 degrees steering head angle and a whacking great 60 inch wheelbase

and that 60 inch wheelbase is the signature

of Ducati's big problem with the L twin which is

The engine is made with

axial fins

For the laydown cylinder. It's actually 15 degrees up from horizontal and

Perpendicular to the axis fins for the stand-up cylinder

That makes the engine very long

Now in one account that I read it said oh it was so

Marvellously clever that when the engine was designed that the gear shafts were placed one on top of the other to shorten the engine

Ducati's weren't first with this

Uh good see had built all those horizontal cylinders singles horizontal singles

And they had vertically stacked gearboxes for the very same common sense

reason

They should have gone with flat heads kevin

Shorten it right up

And of course in later years they did things like make the exhaust valve shorter

so that the cam cover of the front cylinder could be

canted slightly to allow the engine to

move toward the front wheel just a little bit because

If the front wheel touches the ground you can steer but if it's in the air

You might as well not have it. It could just as well be a chunk of lead

Uh, this has been a problem for Ducati's

Uh with the big v-twin

for years

Uh the 500 had a shorter wheelbase and it was 56.4. I think but it had a little short stroke

And it could be also that uh in that design everything was sort of scrunched

In order to have a shorter wheelbase. Why do we want a shorter wheelbase? It makes the bike faster turning

I was reading about imla today and it talks about direction changing

But this was before these changes were made

that it was basically a fairly high speed track

uh with

Not a lot of twisty stuff added to

Give spectators what they want most I won't mention that what it is

but uh

It was decided at the time supposedly that

the monster wheelbase

Which slows steering down and which reduces the load on the front tire

Um, which is when you're trying to accelerate out of a turn

And the front is pushing pushing pushing

You see you see the rider go

That's called today. It's called closing the front

Losing the front because it reached its peak grip and started down the other side of the curve

but um with

Speed being mostly pretty high during uh

The emerald race the 60 inch didn't seem to handicap them

The history book says they finished 12

Uh in the early laps there was um

Giacomo Agostini on a shaft drive

lash up mv

that had had some

Soup up stuff done to it. He led for a few laps and then um history

So this was a big surprise to a lot of people

All those british teams were accustomed to going to race after race

and placing in various

advantageous positions

But in this thing

They were out of it

It was ducati's day

And uh, of course as as

Mark alluded to earlier

Ducati phone

Paul was out

Maggie his wife answered

Barry sheen's sister

And she said yes, what is it and they told her that paul was

Being summoned and she said yes, he'll be there

and

And he was

But they had a list of people that they wanted they wanted some top names and they were either busy

or uh

Didn't want to do it

Because who'd ever heard of ducati, you know

I used to go by the motorcycle parking lot when I was a

lowly college student and I would see

Some of those single cylinder ducati's with their with their sensuously curvaceous fuel tanks

I liked those

And in later years, um the aprilia 250s their chassis were so

Marvelously shaped it made me think of brand koozie's bird in space

Yeah sculpture, which was just a

freeform

Uh curved object

But that's arty stuff

We're interested in winning races here and

But it's part of the story because uh many people regard

those early ducati's as objects of worship

And you can bet that when this

object is sold

at the next auction

That it will command a tremendous price

Yeah, I want to be bikes. It's going to be at the monoray, uh the meekum auction

During monoray car week august 13 to 15th. So they're going to have uh

This fellow out of germany has that bike and the 750 supersport

74 with

The I don't know. It was about 10 000 miles shown on the

Odometer and it you know, it looks it

That uh, that one didn't that one wasn't a runner supposedly the

The imla 750 was a runner. There were photographs of it being raced vintage raced in germany in the 80s guy with big big curly hair

Smiling, uh, you know 10 years after this was I mean, it was just a used bike

That's the that's the the lot of race bikes usually is like it was last year's thing

We don't need it anymore get rid of it

And especially, you know, I'm going to Daytona and talking to john long, uh, who was uh,

American road racer in the 60s who went to europe quite a bit

Had a pretty great career and did a lot of racing and he was um

He said he would

Sell his bikes one year

He'd he'd race them and then he would sell his privateer most of the time

He would sell them

And then somebody else would race him a couple years

And then he'd buy him back for nothing

Because he liked him and he wanted to have him

To have them but they were just you yeah, they were just used so, you know, 750 imla

I mean, it was a very special moment for ducati and if you love ducati why you would you would be delighted to maybe have that

piece but it's just a used bike and

so to have a

Have a crack at one of eight

Made and we have like I said, we have photos in the archive of the eight bikes lined up at the factory

Although seven we understand seven when you look at the glass fan. There were seven in the class van de demola

But all the details, um, it was interesting, you know, I looked at all the period photos of spudgy arie's bike and some of those guys and

I was telling cabin in our conversations about this the ignition switch is kind of under the

Riders right cheek basically behind the seat on one of the like near the chalk. I think

And it's just a flat plate that's bolted to the frame and it's the negative terminal the battery coming over

It's the ignition switch. It's coil ignition as kevin pointed out. They added

Uh a second spark plug

So you had the stock coils that were way up under the tank kind of near the back

And then a couple of six volt coils that were bolted to the frame

In the front and here's this ignition switch and we're going out to race a 200 mile race

And this ignition switch is a plate. It has like a pin in the middle and it has a u-shaped stamped steel

Pivot and you basically line it up

so that the contacts

Connect the ground. That's the switch

But it is there's no detent. There was no safety wire

I'm just thinking like

Oh god, we could easily turn this motorcycle off

accidentally

It just it was uh, it was a shocking thing to see

Um, I got a lot of hours to study this bike. Um at blackhawk. It's really neat

Of course, uh, many of you will know that uh american dirt trackers and some

Road racers too used a piece of hacksaw blade

taped to the handlebar

Uh that would ground the ignition

That's the kill switch

And when you think of it, would you trust

a 25 dollar toggle switch to the vibration on a

KR750 Harley?

It does not have balance shafts in case you're wondering

It's just this kind of stone simple thing that

The steel is springy. It's not going to take a set and

Ignition be shut off

Pretty reliable

Anyway, that's an aside

One of the things that happened during the development of the 500

L twin

Was that uh

Let's see. Where am I going with this?

I know they experimented with four valve

I want to make sure we talked about that because that was very interesting to me because it they they did experiment with four valves

and that was the um

That later set of heads

But I think what i'm actually getting at is that when

Talioni saw the

Uh auto valvelle

Engine with its steep intake ports. He didn't like four valves

And I'll get back to that in a minute. He didn't like them

But he tried the steep ports on a two valve engine and it worked great

And he immediately adopted it so

this is

proof that he was not just

A crabby old guy who said no to the present day because he was living in the past

Now back to the to the 500

It had four valves and in one version

The four valve made 65 horsepower at 12 000 initially

And with development it got to 69 horsepower at 12 5

Meanwhile, the two valve version had arrived at 71 horsepower

now

Kenny augustine the late Kenny augustine

um at the time the america's

silent but

um brilliant

cylinder head specialist

said

I can get as much air

through a valve cross flow

As these people are with their steep downdraft

And I because of other statements he has made which have been backed up by reality

I have to accept that

anyway

This 500 was air cooled

So with two exhaust valves

You've got to do something to keep the bridge between the two exhaust valve seats from getting hot

expanding so much that it

Deforms the metal around it and then

Breaking with a click when it cools the ports were splayed

And fins between

So each head had two exhaust pipes

And

Having two separate exhaust ports meant that the head

Gathered heat from a greater surface area than if it had a single exhaust port

And I think that this probably limited the compression ratio of the four valve and it probably

Well, let's just say compression ratio

Talioni's

Attitude after the experience with trying to develop a four valve and he had done four valve engines previously air cooled

Was four valves are just a fashionable

Excentricity and we don't need those extra parts

now

He lived in a four valve world and the big rule

Uh, he lived in a two valve world pardon me

He lived in that world

Just as the builders of the great air cooled

airplane radial engines did and their rule was

The fewer the holes you make in the head the less trouble you have with cracking and distortion

So, uh

Had uh his two valve engine had the fewest holes in the head

And probably had less distortion and less trouble with heat

than the four valve with all of its extra port surface area. So

He was intolerant of four valves from then because he had had detailed he made the attempt to develop a successful four valve

cylinder head and the two valve had stayed ahead of it

and it might always for

Uh air cooled engines who can say

So well it harkens back to all of the four valves that hadn't come before that

You know, they hadn't figured out

How to solve all the compounding implications

Of four valves as you described the heat and all the other problems the surface area

They had terrible materials for valves

And so they made if they made the valve smaller

It was a shorter distance from the hottest point the center of the valve head to the cool

valve seat

And that was the reason why early engines used three or four valves always two exhausts

That was to

subject the exhaust valve and it's

Not yet ready for primetime

material

To the least heating the least severe conditions

But clearly, uh, Talioni had it under control with the two valve because it went the distance and won the race

No no better argument can be found in that world

Now what happened in 73? They allowed the 350s to run and as uh my australian

My australian friend said uh in an email this morning

They

Hosed off the four strokes

And um just like they had done at Daytona so many people think that four strokes

Were killed

Uh at Daytona by the tz 750 which some people call 700. There's no 700 in yamaha literature. It is tz 750 a

In fact, what had happened was in 72 and 73 the race had been won by little dinky

350 twin yamaha

First by Don Emme and then by Arnold sardin and there's a story that going around that says

That when the engines were being built up for the 200 at Daytona in 73

that uh sardin insisted on having

a fresh crank in his engine

and there was only one left

And kelker others

Tossed the crank to him

Well, I don't know

I think you'd have to be pretty angry to throw one of those crack chefs knowing

That it takes more than 15 minutes to true one after it's been correctly assembled. I was gonna say

But the thing is yamaha did not like to run uh

Roller crank pressed together engines more than 400 miles

without replacing the crank show

and

Probably ducati had similar

knowledge of their engines the mondial

125 single from the later fifties

Making close to 20 horsepower at 13 000 rpm

New crank every meeting every race weekend

new crank shaft other crank shaft either to be rebuilt or

scrap

So and then of course that was at a time when

Um vacuum remelted steels to make rolling the element bearings out of didn't exist yet

They were sort of commercialized around 1964

Talioni would have had access to all that stuff

So this is

This is a grand story in 73

While sardin was up front

Bruno spagiari

on the shorter stroke

more souped up

Imla bike was second. Well that had the special heads that had the 60 degree uh

Yes, those heads

It's been explained to me that they wanted to keep the

Desmo mechanism unchanged because it was a well proven

valve drive system

So that meant that the tips of the valve stems had to be in the same place

So that as the

Bore of the cylinder was made larger

The valve angle changed

So that it was 63 point something in one case and 61 in another and what have you

so it wasn't

A matter of oh, this is the trend for the future because that trend was visible in 1947 when burt hopwood

the peripatetic

Burt hopwood who worked wherever there was engineer work

designed

the norton export twin

with its

lovely

shallow hemi head with a

58 degree included angle

And when when chrysler built their hemi

What did it have 58.5?

It was out there

Narrowing valve angle. It was out there, but in this case. I think they did it simply out of

convenience because they didn't want to design a whole new

Desmo mechanism uh for

uh where the valve tips were going to end up

In a bigger in a bigger combustion chamber. So

Who knows let's

Go to a seance and ask

The darkness for the well we could have called bruno de prato. He might tell us something. Yeah, he might it's true

He's told me some wonderful stuff. Well, he was around, you know bruno

So when cycle magazine went to italy to cover

The building of the bikes they spent a week prior to

Prior to them of the 200 fill shilling

And the art director at the time whose name escapes me

But they went over with um, you know 100 rolls of black and white kodak triax probably 400

And just shot the daylights out of it and bruno de prato was the

English-speaking press person who kind of took them on the tour and arranged the meals with dr. T and

Translated as much as he needed to

So um, but yeah, what a time I think uh for

The bike represents a couple of things the twin

It represents the blueprint that ducati used for every ensuing super bike, you know 90 degree v twin

And it became

It did become there, you know, they became their trademark. They were a singles company

They were known for, you know, handy singles and and then they became a twin company

And you know for anyone that's been around

For as long as the twins have been around ducati is a twins company

But as we have discussed in the past ducati is a is a technical company

They're looking for the the technical solution and when they went to moto gp that they may have experimented with the twin like well

We know this pretty well, but you're not going to win moto gp with that and they made a four cylinder because that was

The engineering decision that needed to be made when bordi came on and and bordi's like forget this two valve stuff

You know like i've been to causeworth. Let's do this and you know, he

He brought some bad ideas for motorcycling from causeworth, you know the the long timings that you've always talked about

But um the story you told about talionis camp and bordi's camp, you know the wrestling of

two valves

Oh, yeah

What what happened was that bordi's group had gone to the track for track day

And they were returning to the shop to put the bikes in and lock up

And when they got there they found the talioni group in in residence and they wouldn't let them in

So fisticuffs

resulted fifth power saco

and no doubt a lot of

People standing around kind of uh, I don't know what got into me

seemed like the thing to do at the time

but there was real

Real enmity and we know that bordi's autos alvoi was the first ducati ever

to make

over 100 horsepower

and it went from there

and uh

They bordi commented at one point that the way that

V-twin was developed was no way to design an engine

It was sort of like they started racing and they had some problems

They had to fix the problems and then they changed the design a little bit and then more problems

and what you would like would be to start out with a

unified up to the moment design

Do the development on the dyno and test track and then go racing?

Yeah, bring money

It it wasn't how it happened then, but I want to add this other thing which is

that when

Cook nelson is rider and and phil schilling the late phil schilling as tuner

Won the

1977 Daytona

Superbike race it was a similar

matter of

Timing that favored only them

Because they were fear that was not a basically stock bike. It was a basically

Modified to death bike. They'd been working on it for five years

They had changed everything and they had a relationship with the factory as well

I mean there's sure they did there was no factory did not let them have any 60 degree heads

and uh, they

Didn't get on with berliner either

and when um

They won that race in Daytona

It was the last moment at which it was possible for a ducati to win

because the japanese four-cylinder bikes were

Being modified the chassis's were being modified the

Front forks and swing arms may be modified or replaced was in the ama rule book because somebody knew

That street bike stuff is

Nothing you'd want if you're at the races

Somebody being steve mcloughlin and john all rich they they wrote the initial superbike rules and steve mcloughlin's

Furniture lists department apartment as they as they related to me recently at Daytona

Because his girlfriend her wife had moved out and so she took the furniture and uh, but he invited john up with his then

girlfriend trudy who rode on the bike and they sat on the floor

with a typewriter and typed the rules

Including throw that trash out

Yeah, and replace it with something that might work so that we can end up with motorcycles that are actually race bikes

And the problem was that they it took them

uh from the beginning of the ama

thousand cc superbike class

to uh, the end of 1982 when that was replaced with a 750 class

to get them

Well, if you look at at uh, john owens's photo book

Superbike you will see that those late bikes look professionally prepared. They look like real race bikes

And when you look at the earlier ones

They don't have that look

And what happened, of course, was that they didn't realize

That the japanese were serious when they were asked why their bikes didn't have high speed handling

Oh in us you have 65 mile per hour speed limit

Thank you

Now I understand

but

Those early super bikes were basically

Uh double the horsepower of a 60s triumph 650

in a chassis

of 1960s

chassis suspension and tires

So there was trouble

Yeah, and it took that time to overcome that trouble and by that time the japanese had moved on they realized

Oh, we have to make bikes that can be raced just as they

Come out of the crate

No welding no bending no secret stuff

And I mean the the Kawasaki was related to me, you know, as with I was eating dinner with john long and uh,

Harry clinsman and all these guys from the superbike era

Uh, you know those first races at Daytona was it was there with bmw and and we had the r90s and Udo Guido was there and Udo san

And they were all saying, you know, yeah, the Kawasaki's made tons more power

But they could not get the power to the ground. They couldn't make the bike turn

They couldn't make them stop and as you said, they had wobbly front suspension and all these problems and

You know they they said, you know

Look those guys had all ridden that stuff and they said, you know

You'd roll the throttle on and everything would bend on a Kawasaki it would go this way or that way and it was just not

Um, it's what gave bmw the window. I mean Udo was able to take a flat twin

You know 1000 cc bmw

As you described a 50 mile engine

At its height of development and making a lot of power for what it was

um and taking that bike

And making it what it exactly needed to be in 76 to do the job not only to win the race at Daytona, but to

Take take the championship

And throwing away

As you see, yeah, so that was the joke

About the twin shock bmw suddenly having a mono shock. It said you could reposition the shocks

And uh Udo joke was I repositioned it to a shelf in the shop

Yeah, parts department

Good one. Yeah

so, uh

that success

Winning the Daytona Superbike Race in 77

Lit the u.s. Market up the Ducati winning in 77 Ducati. Yes, and uh because

For a lot of people that I've talked to from that in that era

Ducati. Oh, it's big on european flair, but

What have they done lately?

Well, they've done this and this

and

They are

powerful

technical company

Making beautiful motorcycles

Um, and they're locked in a tight battle with aprilia

Also an italian manufacturer in moto gp. So

What what could be better? Yeah, it's it was a real, you know, I mean, I know it was years apart, but it was a

For Ducati's legend in the united states

I didn't hurt that the bikes were very pretty and the the round case engine is gorgeous

You know, it has an aesthetic appeal

It has a round steel tubular frame

The faring shape lovely the tank little the little humpback seat

All that stuff the long wheelbase it's it has a real elegance to it. That's fine

But it actually worked that was the thing is it worked perfectly for them in 72

And you know phil and cook could

Go to the formula one gear cutter guy and get the gears hardened and to do all the things that made that motorcycle

Capable of doing what it could do and then cooks

You know cook was a drag racer at first

He was you know, he was I think one of his great lines was when he was he wrote he wrote for us about drag racing

xlca charlie's he was a harley sportster drag guy and it was uh

Nitro the golden-tressed engine torching bitch goddess

yes

Spectacular, but he he was also, you know learning to road race as that bike was maturing under him and they

Let's not leave out

Typing in an office for money typing in an office for money. You betcha

Yeah, all of that and uh

Just

But it really set. I mean it it set the hook in the market for uh

For dughati and in big bikes and then you had hailwood and you know hailwood

Yeah, winning at isle of man and um again it proved that the bikes were capable and by the way they looked pretty darn good

And then they just took it from there and as you said, you know, they were kind of bandating

As uh as borty said it was no way to develop a motorcycle engine

but they were doing it and they kept doing it and then

They made some real strides and when the funding was good, you know, they were they were doing well and now

Look at them now

God, it's just well the current CEO, uh, claudio dominicale

Announced the policy some years back in which he's basically said no more of this european flare baloney

We're going to build motorcycles that have

The best performance available

No qualifiers the best well dominicale, you know, he came on as an engineer

You do you remember how many were on when he was hired? It was very few

It was like oh, we have three or five engineers or something

When claudio was first hired and so he came up as an engineer working on

you know engines and stuff and uh

And and now he's running the company the bike you're talking about and the period you're talking about is the post

to blanche era so we had

The design of the 999 in that period and that in itself is a really interesting time and story but

The 1098 and you know, um motorcycles at ducati were geared for top speed

That's that's how they did it, you know ducati monster. Yeah geared for top speed, you know, they would they would find the ratios and

You had tall gearing and you know like my 95 ducati 900 ss

It feels spectacular like 105 miles an hour. I mean amazing

And if you're in sixth gear and you're going 60 no, it's like

You know, it's uh

It's just really not there the 1098 is when they ducati made all of those definitions

They said this bike we're going to compete head to head in quarter mile

And they geared the bike to do a really good quarter mile time

It wasn't you know, it wasn't just strictly geared for top speeds and how do we do this?

They were actually very honest about their power output and very honest about their actual weights, which

I'm not sure where we are these days, you know, it's been all over the map

But they did change that policy a little bit just because everybody else was you know fibbing or it was like

Well, we're you know, as they say, where's the crank? Where's the horsepower measured? Oh, it's measured at the crank

Oh, it's measured at the connecting rod. Oh, it's measured at the combustion chamber, you know the zero loss

Or less than zero

measured at the pr

Copywriters pinpoint. Yeah, but um, yeah, they did

They did what they do they married themselves to technical merit and equality they didn't we're not gonna rely on italian flair and

Well, this is how we do it, you know, it's like what BMW did. I mean that was a massive cultural transformation for for BMW to say

We're gonna build an inline four cylinder superbike, but we're a we're a flat twins company

No, we're gonna build in line

I mean to get that to happen because there was an old guard that did not want that to happen

They had the turn signals like

There isn't a BMW left where you hit your thumb up to turn right for the turn signal and you hit your thumb up left

And then you cancel with the flat button on the other side

Like they threw all that in the trash and they built an inline four cylinder superbike with a telescopic fork

Like no telelevered. No hot sac stuff

Just a fork, right? Like we know this works. Like can we just do this folks?

And they just went for it, you know

And the problem was and this was sad

that

They have of course BMW

Have tremendous engine experience

But it was in formula one at that time and

The guys on those bikes would get in the lead

Lead five laps and then they'd start racing backwards because they were tire eaters

They had power bands with steep rates of torque rise

And it took time

For them to understand

A different type of engine is required a different type of torque curve is required for motorcycle use

Because they have so little footprint

That footprint

We must be so kind to it. We must take every care

Keep the tire to pavement contact consistent

Not smoking not sliding

Accelerating and going forward and they got it right. They got it right and they went after it and

And toprak bras got the oglu won

Three championships on BMW so

This shows that nobody just

Engineers things like crazy and wins races

No question about it that used to be Honda's deal Honda enters Honda wins

But we've seen with both, uh, Honda and Yamaha that

Something happened around covid time

Maybe the chassis suffered from that disease because it's taken them until now

Um, Yamaha have hardly advanced at all. How did the showing promise?

Where did it go this this tremendous dominance that they once had with, uh, Mark Marquez?

Engineering is tough because they're tough

experienced

imaginative engineers in the other shops

And

I I saw this years ago when when ducati was constantly changing their displacement 851

888

926

996 998

They never made a mistake with combustion. They had rapid combustion throughout

where, uh,

Japanese brands would try to shorten the stroke make the bore bigger so that they could have bigger valves higher revs

Oh, we have to go back to the other because we couldn't get the power from this one

Or muzzy talking about it took two years when there was the stroke change to a shorter stroke took two years to equal

The power of the previous engine they did not have a clear method of optimizing combustion speed

Ducati did

Incidentally, uh in 1919

sd. Herron the

father of the air cooled

radial aircraft engine cylinder head

Designed a 90 degree v-twin for hotchkiss bsa

Um, that's

Just a little bit of bar chat

But interesting because sd. Herron was a very important person during world war two

and the years leading up to it

And who knows how deeply any of these engineers delves

Into the past because it is enriching

There are things there

People have made sense out of things in the past that haven't made sense

sense since

it's a good idea to

Go up the street and drink in a different bar and hang out with a different crowd from time to time read read old books

Read old books

Read old books man. I mean, it's it's absolutely true. We got a correct top rack 12 championships on bmw

And he won one of them on on yamaha, but he did he won two in a row on bmw. So yeah

Yep

Well, thank you. Uh, thanks for joining us folks. Uh, if you're dying to get your hands on an mls 750

august 13th the 15th

me comes uh

meekum monoray auctions

Meekum auctions monoray

That's where you can see that bike offered along with the um the 74 super sport pretty cool

Thanks for joining us. We'll see you in the comments and catch you next time

About this episode

Travel back to the 1972 Imola 200 with Cycle World's Mark Hoyer and technical editor Kevin Cameron as they dissect the legendary race that saved Ducati from financial ruin. Discover how legendary designer Dr. Fabio Taglioni engineered the revolutionary 90-degree V-twin engine, utilizing desmodromic valves to conquer vibration and unlock unprecedented RPMs. The hosts share fascinating behind-the-scenes stories of riders Paul Smart and Bruno Spadgiari nursing their sputtering, fuel-starved bikes to a historic one-two finish, forever cementing Ducati's reputation as a world-class superbike manufacturer just before the Japanese multi-cylinder boom.

90 degree V twin desmodromic Fabio Taglioni primary shaking force sandcast cases squish band

Dodge Aries Jaguar XK Toyota Supra

Original notes

Find us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/cw/CycleWorldPodcast

Every superbike and MotoGP bike Ducati has made in the last 50-plus years owes it all to the company's first successful V-twin racer: The 1972 Imola 750. The Imola 200-mile race was the coming out party for Ducati's 750 Imola racebike, designed and led by the great engineer Fabio Taglioni. It was the motorcycle Ducati needed to stay in business, and the win showed it was exactly the right bike at precisely the right time, all the way down to its bevel-driven overhead-cam desmodromic valve system. It's a story of financial woes, drama, and an unlikely success that set Ducati on a path it maintains today. Join Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer as they talk about the Imola 750 and Hoyer's chance to see one of the original eight bikes in person with Mecum Auctions as that example gets prepared for the Monterey Car Week Auction August 13-15.

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