Rumor: Ducati Scrambler Cometh

While I was lounging at the pool this holiday weekend, getting my bronze on, the A&R Bothan Spy network was hard at work dumpster diving, hacking emails, and subscribing to the NSA’s live PRISM feed.

The fruits of that labor was the alarming realization of how many kitten videos the motorcycle industry collectively watches in a single day, and the fact that Ducati is working on scrambler-style motorcycle.

The project itself dates way back when Pierre Terblanche was still toiling away in Bologna, dodging equal portions of labor strikes and carbonara, and at the time was based around the now defunct Ducati Sport Classic.

Shelved, and thought never to see the light of day, we can only imagine this whole Hipstacyclist™ movement has helped Ducati rethink its position regarding a scrambler.

What we expect to be either a 2014 or 2015 model year machine, there are couple differing rumors on the Ducati Scrambler project, and knowing Ducati, the two stories we have heard may not be mutually exclusive, and likely indicate that the Italian company itself hasn’t come to a hard conclusion on this machine.

One version of the rumor pegs the new Scrambler as being an air-cooled single-cylinder machine, 600cc or so in displacement. A stepping stone for Ducati to enter the smaller bike market, the Ducati Scrambler would be the gateway from big bikes to little bikes in the Italian brand.

While Audi has been fairly laissez-faire with its tampering on the product side of Ducati Motor Holding, one has to imagine that there are marching orders to develop machines that would be better suited to emerging markets.

We have a hard time thinking that Ducati is building a new air-cooled motor, as the industry is being pushed further and further towards water-cooled lumps that have friendlier CO2 emissions, but the idea isn’t the craziest thing we have heard today (Patrick, she’s 19!).

Other sources say the Ducati Scrambler will be based off the Ducati Hypermotard, which was designed with a modular chassis, for this very undertaking. In that case, the Scrambler would have the same peppy 821cc water-cooled v-twin motor found on the Hypermotard. A more “Ducati” approach to building a new bike, but perhaps less enthralling.

What we do know for certain is that the new Ducati Scrambler will be very similar in design to Terblanche’s work, with some reworking and updating.

Will it fill the void left behind from the Ducati Sport Classic? Probably not, but it could be a sign of future more-niche machines to come from Borgo Panigale.