The Motard and Desert X
There’s a lot to love from Ducati for 2020. The company has a new Panigale V2, a new version of the Multistrada, and the new Streetfighter coming. It may also have some cool new off-road bikes in the future.
At a recent 2020 lineup announcement, the CEO Claudio Domenicali talked about a couple of concept designs, the Motard and the Desert X, both of which are based on the Scrambler. Those concepts will appear at EICMA.
The Ducati Scrambler has become a very handy platform for Ducati to riff on. The Motard and Desert X will take this platform even further. The Motard is a sleek design built more for the street with the 800 engine. If built, it will allow Ducati to hit an even more focused area of the market, one that it didn’t have access to before.
The Desert X is more of a desert off-roader based on the 1100 engine. The bike takes its styling cues from the many desert racers out there. It’s a handsome bike, and I think takes the Scrambler base to a whole new level. The bike pays homage to all of the Paris-Dakar bikes of the past and present.
It’ll be interesting to see where things go with these two concepts. Jim will be at EICMA, doing his best to cover all that happens there. Hopefully, he’ll have time to at least take a gander at these two concepts. You can view Domenicali discussing the concepts in the video below.
Its an “homage” to the Edi Orioli win of the Dakar in the 90s on the Cagiva Ducati powered Elefant. Elefant owners have been waiting for this bike since the Scrambler Desert sled gave us hope as a true lighter weight air-cooled engine adv bike.