'We already have the most powerful bike' | No displacement increase for Multistrada V4 says Ducati

Ducati developers have confirmed that the Multistrada V4 platform won’t receive a bump in displacement any time soon, with the company opting to steer clear of a capacity arms race now raging between other manufacturers. 

With KTM likely to announce the arrival of a 1390 Super Adventure to replace the current 1290, and with BMW already giving their top-shelf tourer, the GS Adventure a moped sized capacity boost to 1300cc, it would be reasonable to expect Ducati may be planning a similar move – especially with Euro5+ emissions regulations looming.  

However, the Bologna brand have declared in no uncertain terms that their current four pot Multistrada needs neither more power, nor cubes to remain competitive. 

Andrea Rossi, part of the Multistrada development team, told MCN: “We are not looking to increase the capacity of the Multistrada. We already have the most powerful adventure bike on the market.  

“We understand why our competitors want to increase displacement because they want to improve their power, but from our point of view we already have a good result and the best bike. 

“The V4 Granturismo engine we use can already achieve over 200bhp if we wanted it to. If we wanted more than 170bhp, the current platform is already capable of that,” Rossi continued.

“The Multistrada RS is more powerful already with the same engine, but our product briefs are created based on what our customers need from the bike and from there, we set out to create the best characteristics to achieve that. 

“One of the things we wanted to achieve was maximum reliability with less maintenance. For us, reliability is our first rule today, not just chasing performance.”