Ducati Diavel wins over UK riders

Ducati is covering new ground with the Diavel – a boldly-styled cruiser/muscle bike with sportsbike power and chassis parts. When spy pictures first appeared, the reaction from some motorcyclenews.com users was negative in the extreme, but now potential buyers have seen comprehensive photographs. So do they like it?

Sean Moore is a 43 year-old Suzuki B-King owner. He’s looked at the Streetfighter before, but the Diavel has grabbed his interest too: “It’s big and chunky like the B-King – I’m over 19-stone, and I had a GSX-R1000 before I went for something bigger. I’ve had Ducati’s before though, so I wouldn’t rule another one out. Reliability is a lot better than they used to be, they used to have a bad reputation, but they’re much better now.” 

Stuart Hubbart, 41, is a salesman at Sycamore Ducati and Harley-Davidson in Uppingham. He owns a 2011 Harley Nightster and a 1993 FireBlade, and will be trying to sell the Diavel to customers browsing the mixed Ducati/Harley showroom: “I think it’s gorgeous. I had nightmares of Ducati trying to compete with the B-King and V-Rod when I heard they were building a cruiser, but it looks fantastic.

“At the price (£12,995) it’s at it’s got to hurt the V-Max (£19,999). The back end looks great – it reminds me a bit of the SV1000, the way the lights are arranged. It looks a bit like a cruiser from the front, but the rest is classic musclebike. It looks like it’s got some bollocks! There’s nothing else that looks like it.”

Read the full story in next week’s MCN, on sale Wednesday 17 November.