Factory Cafe Road Tests

It’s a truly magnificent time to be into retro streetbikes. The current issue of Cafe Racer focuses several road tests on the current crop of factory cafe customs, a breed of streetbike barely known a decade ago. One of our faves is Ducati’s new Scrambler cafe Racer. The 800cc L-Twin combines the lightweight handling the very popular Scrambler line is revered for with more beefy suspension, an altered chassis and tasteful, gold and black styling inspired by Ducatis of the 1970s. We were lucky enough to attend the recent launch in Bologna, Italy where Ducati had us put the new machine through its paces along the incredibly twisty, scenic mountain roads of the Apennie Mountains, a place where Julie Andrews belting out “Sound of Music” wouldn’t have seemed impossible. The pace was intense and the SCR more than held its own. Read all about it in CRM issue #51, out now.