V4 YES!
We were standing beside the ridiculously beautiful V4S discussing whether or not to spend the next two hours going through its huge suite of electronics, or just let me ride off with the owner’s manual in my pocket and a contact number in my phone.
Decision made, I hit the starter and after a couple of revolutions the engine boomed explosively into life. Suddenly we were shouting at each other to be heard over what must be one of the loudest standard pipes on the road. A couple of handfuls of throttle had the pair of us grinning like Cheshire cats and shaking our heads in disbelief as the ground vibrated and everyone turned to look in our direction. How Ducati has got away with this is a mystery, but who's complaining?
The new Panigale V4 range is clearly a huge fork in the road for Ducati, given that for the last 30 years the company’s reputation and customer base has been built around its V-twins of varying size and sophistication, and the question has to be, why change?
Well, with Ducati's stated aim of wanting to build the world's most powerful mass-produced Superbike the why a V4 stems in part from the need for the engine to be
