Amidst all the exciting revelations at this year's Milan Motorcycle Show or the EICMA, Italian marque Ducati has introduced two new iterations of its highly popular Scrambler series. While the first one is a new beautiful and sporty cafe racer - the Scrambler Cafe Racer, the second one is an off-road focused Scrambler christened the Desert Sled.
Ducati Scrambler Cafe Racer:
Ducati Scrambler Cafe Racer
The new Scrambler Cafe Racer, also my personal favourite, comes with a glossy black coat with gold accents, which has been termed by Ducati as 'Black Coffee'. The bike is perhaps the most unique among its Scrambler siblings and comes with glossy black decals on both sides bordered by a gold finish pin strips. The 'Scrambler' name with checkered flag graphics and Ducati branding is inscribed on each side. With this new Scrambler, the company is also paying homage to legendary Ducati racer Bruno Spaggiari, as there is a number board on each side of the bike with '54' written on it.
Ducati Scrambler Cafe Racer Side Profile
In feature department, we can truly say that Ducati has checked all the right boxes to make the bike the ideal cafe racer. The bike comes with low, aluminium clip-on handlebars fitted with bar-end mirrors, a classic cafe racer-style humped seat with a glossy black cowl and a minimalist front fender. The bike also comes with some modern features like a Termignoni exhaust with anodized black covers, fully adjustable upside-down fork, sporty aluminium foot pegs, and swingarm-mounted license plate holder. To complement the new colour scheme Ducati has offered the bike in gold finished 10-spoke 17-inch alloy wheels shod with sporty Pirelli Diablo Rosso II tires on both front and rear. The bike comes with a seat height of 805mm and weighs 188kg.
Ducati Scrambler Cafe Racer Rear
The heart of the bike is the same 803cc L-twin air-and-oil-cooled engine that does duty on the current Scrambler bikes. The Euro 4 compliant motor develops 74bhp at 8,250 rpm and 68Nm of peak torque at 5,750 rpm. The bikes also come with Bosch's 9.1 ABS as a standard fitment.
Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled:
Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled
The second Scrambler from Ducati, the Scrambler Desert Sled is essentially the 2017 replacement for the Urban Enduro model. The name itself is a homage to the scrambler-style street bikes that competed in events in the southern California desert several decades ago.
With the Scrambler Desert Sled, Ducati has prepped the Scrambler with a more off-road focus, giving it more suspension travel, a slightly longer wheelbase, reinforced tubular frame and wire spoke wheels - a 19-inch front wheel and 17-inch rear, shod in specially designed Pirelli Scorpion Rally STR rubber.
Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled Side Profile
The stock motorcycle comes with an increased seat height of a seat height of 861mm compared to the Scrambler Urban Enduro and tips the scale at 207kg. The bike's frame has been reinforced to cope with more aggressive use and the wide bars get a motocross style brace, too. The fork is a super-fat fully-adjustable 46 KYB unit, while the rear is a fully adjustable KYB monoshock.
Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled Will Be Offered In Colours
The bike comes two colour options - white and red. The new snowy white shade is new for the Scrambler range and is well-complimented by the red border finishing around the tank decals and the high-mounted white front fender that mimics a beak. The red one, on the other hand, gets the same white fenders with a Ducati Red fuel tanks and while decals on each side.
The new Desert Sled also uses the same 803cc L-twin air-and-oil-cooled engine that makes the 74bhp at 8,250 rpm and develops 68Nm of peak torque at 5,750 rpm.
