Motorcycle Investor mag
Subscribe to our free email news
Ducati Apollo – mythical beast
(Dec 2023, by Guy 'Guido' Allen)
Hugely ambitious, the Ducati Apollo,
aka the Berliner, never made it into the showrooms
It's 1964 and Ducati had shown its out-there 1260cc V-four prototype at the Earls Court motor show. Across the Atlantic the company's American distributor, Berliner Motor Corporation, has optimistically prepared brochures for the behemoth.
Berliner clearly saw a market in the USA for the machine,
particularly with police services which would have given
it immediate volume and credibility.
The project was started in earnest as far back as 1959.
Fabio Taglioni designed the engine, with electric starter
and horizontally-split crankcases, wet sump, plus a
five-speed transmission – features then at the cutting
edge for motorcycles.
With chain drive, it had 16-inch wheels (a common USA
police requirement at the time) and drum brakes. The
latter were a potential weak spot.
Indian was out of business, leaving the cop market
largely to Harley-Davidson. At the time it was building
Panheads.
One teething trouble for the ambitious
Ducati was the combination of the machine's weight
(240kg dry), power (100hp/75kW or double a Panhead) and
speed potential (190km/h) meant the prototypes shredded
rubber. It's said that eventually an acceptable tyre
life was arrived at with the engine pulled back to 65hp
(49kW). That however killed off one of its biggest
selling points.
Given that high-performance tyres were very much in
existence for heavier vehicles such as cars, this issue
should not have been insurmountable but may have taken
time.
Perhaps a bigger problem was the company was then under
the management eye of the Italian government (via the
Istituto per la Riconstruzione Industriale) and it
remained unconvinced the Apollo would be commercially
viable.
As a result, the project was
shelved.
Berliner meanwhile had gone as far as
talking about two different specs for the machine – a
100hp Sport with four carburetors and an 80hp version
with two – and suggesting the price would be around
US$1500. What might have been...
***
Notes
The name Apollo hails from Greek and Roman
mythology. Among other qualities, he is regarded among
the most beautiful of gods and as a deity of sun and
light. More at
Wikipedia.
An example of the bike was on show for
a time at the Ducati
Museum and is now believed to be back in the
private collection of its owner, in Japan.
(Pic by Steffen Wolf via
Wikimedia)
Meanwhile the Berliner brothers did eventually get to
sell Italian-made police bikes to forces in the USA
during the sixties, namely Moto Guzzi Ambassador and
Eldorado-based machines.
1964 Earls Court Motor Show short film
by British Pathe at YouTube
-------------------------------------------------
Produced by AllMoto abn 61 400 694 722
Privacy: we do not collect cookies or any other data.
Archives
Contact