DUCATI 860 GT

DUCATI 860 GT BY MADE IN ITALY MOTORCYCLES


In the sleepy English country town of Stowmarket you’ll find one of the world’s top Ducati specialists: Made In Italy Motorcycles. For thirty years John Fallon has been buying, selling and restoring Ducatis—and we’ve finally snared a set of images that show the incredible quality of his work.
It’s a heavily customised 860 GT, inspired by Ducati’s beautiful 1970s Super Sport machines. The man responsible for the metallurgy is Fallon’s workshop guru Neil Ridgewell, who’s also a qualified Ferrari, Bentley and Maserati technician.


Most Ducatisti will be scratching their heads looking at this bike, so it’s worth digging into the backstory a little. It starts with Giorgetto Giugiaro, the world’s most lauded car designer in the 1970s.
Giugiaro drew sensuous curves for Alfa Romeo, De Tomaso and Maserati, and posters of his cars adorned millions of teenage bedroom walls.






So you can’t blame Ducati for asking Giugiaro to design the 860 GT. But Giugiaro suddenly changed tack, and ditched the curves for what became known as the ‘folded paper’ look.
It worked for the Lotus Esprit and the VW Golf, but left the angular 860 GT looking awkward and out of place in the Bologna factory’s line-up.



The 860 GT is not a bad bike, though—apart from a slight tendency to weave at high speed. And this one has the looks to match its capabilities.

It’s a 1977 model owned by Tom Craig, who’d set his heart on a ‘green frame’ 750 Super Sport. “I was living in Monaco and wanted a bike for day trips into the mountains and over to Italy,” he reports. “But I ended up with an 860 GT.”



Tom decided to give the bike an extreme makeover. So he briefed Made In Italy Motorcycles to restyle his GT with a classic Ducati vibe. It’s effectively a monochrome version of a green frame bike, but obviously a custom build.
“I felt uncomfortable doing a straight copy of the green frame,” says Tom. “But I think the result is pretty good. Everything is as it should be, and it goes as well as it looks.”\\
“The red leather saddle is confirmation that this bike never sees wet days—not that there are many in Monaco!”
Head over to the Made In Italy Motorcycles website to see more fine Italian machinery, including Moto Guzzis, MV Agustas and Laverdas.




CONDOR: THE OTHER BOXER MOTORCYCLE





Unless you’re a military enthusiast or a Swiss army conscript, you probably haven’t heard of Condor-Werke AG.it’s one of Europe’s sleeper marques, and started building motorcycles for the Swiss military in 1893. (Yes, that’s a year before Hildebrand & Wolfmüller launched the first true production motorcycle.)


The machine captured here by photographer Marc Schneider is a Condor A580 that rolled off the production line in 1953 in Courfaivre, a small town in the watchmaking canton of Jura. It’s owned by a collector who wishes to remain anonymous, but is happy to share images and a little history.

The similarities between the Condor and contemporary BMWs are obvious. The Condor is not a direct copy, but it’s a bulletproof, well-engineered air-cooled boxer with shaft drive.

The Schweizer Armee coveted the BMWs used by German troops during World War II, so Condor got the job of designing a Swiss equivalent. Blueprinted in 1944, the A580 has telescopic forks, plunger-style rear suspension, hydraulic self-adjusting valve lifters and aluminum cylinder heads. It’s clearly inspired by German flathead boxer models—such as the BMW R71, R6 or R12, and the Zündapp KS600.
The bike we’re looking at here spent a decade in service before being auctioned off. When the 1970s arrived it was locked away, and forgotten till the 21st century.

It’s now been treated to a classy restoration job, but retains some of the battle scars it earned during military service—including a few broken cooling fins on the cylinder heads. The tires are a period-correct Metzeler Block C pattern—hard to come by nowadays, but a neat finishing touch for the restoration.
The subdued military paint is gone, replaced by a red color that Condor used for its civilian models, which sold for twice the price of contemporary BMWs. But the unusual gear ratio reduction lever (below) remains, mounted on the right side of the transmission.
This lever gives the Condor eight gears—four for the street and four for hard terrain, which reduces top speed from around 110 to 50 kph (31 mph).

The Condor may not be the most exotic of classic motorcycles, but it’s virtually indestructible. And who doesn’t like the idea of an older bike that won’t break down every five minutes, and is simple to maintain?

Maybe it’s time to start trawling the classifieds in Zürich and Geneva.




THE ‘BRAND NEW’ DUCATI DARMAH




If Ducati Darmah looks as good as new, that’s because it almost is. It’s a ground-up build from the Dutch restoration wizards at Back To Classics, one of Europe’s top Ducati specialists.
There’s a story behind this bike, and one we can all relate to. “We were contacted by a guy who’d recently sold his business, and was getting ready for retirement,” says shop owner Harné Heuvelman. “Browsing through old photographs, he found himself back in 1980, on his recently purchased Ducati 900 Sport Desmo Darmah.”

“So he asked us if we could build him the exact same bike: red and white color scheme, large dual seat, FPS wheels, a kick start lever, and so on.”

Harné didn’t have a Darmah for sale at the time, but it wasn’t long before he came across a frame and engine. After checking his huge stock of Ducati parts, he realized that he had everything he needed to make an exact copy of his client’s long-lost bike.

The frame and engine were from a 1979 Darmah, so Harné decided to replicate a factory-fresh model from that year, right down to the last nut and bolt.

In his workshop in the tiny town of Bergambacht, the bevel engine was torn apart and rebuilt—with a new con-rod kit, pistons, valves and camshafts. The casings were salvageable, so they’ve been wet-blasted and returned to as-new condition.

Harné has kept the original Bosch ignition system, resisting the temptation to upgrade it with modern components, however better they may be. After all, the brief was to create a ‘new’ Darmah just as it left the factory.

The only non-standard parts on this machine are Ikon shocks to improve the handling, and wiring for a TomTom Rider GPS unit. The result is stunning—and suggests that Darmah designer Leopoldo Tartarini should receive more credit for his work.

“The Darmah isn’t a sought-after classic, compared to a 900 Super Sport,” Harné admits. “But it’s one of the best classic Ducatis from the user’s point of view. It has a very good riding position, electric start and, one can argue, it’s still a very good looking bike.”