Brad Pitt may or may not have gotten his clutch cables bent out of shape over Tom Cruise's taking delivery of a new $72,500 Ducati Desmosedici RR motorcycle before Pitt did, as reported Feb. 5 by TMZ.com. Though P.R. flaks for both megawatt stars denied the beef, that was less important to me than the object of their rumored affection. I immediately called Ducati headquarters — not to confirm or deny the rumor, but to get the skinny on the Desmosedici RR.
"The word on the bike is it's the most exotic roadgoing motorcycle ever," John Paolo Canton, press officer for Ducati, told me. "It's so far advanced from any bike on the street that it's in a category of its own.
It's the equivalent of a Ferrari, completely off the charts. It's race-oriented and almost has no business on the street."
In other words, you're not going to use this thing to fetch your Sunday bagel. The "RR" part of the name derives from the Ducati Corse Grand Prix racing Desmosedici GP6, the same bike that famed racers Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau competed with in the 2006 MotoGP World Championship.
The hefty sticker isn't putting anyone off, either. "It's a sold-out limited edition," says Canton. "We only made 1,500, and they all sold for $72,500. We're not making money on it at that price.
We thought we would sell about 200 as a marketing exercise. But we've got everyone buying, from car owners to racers to celebs. Yeah, it's a lot of money for a bike, but the U.S. race bike version costs over a million to build. For a streetgoing replica, it's well worth the money."
Although all 1,500 Desmosedicis are sold out, it's not a case of owners showing up to Ducati and driving theirs off the lot. Reservations have been accepted via the official Ducati dealer network since June 2, 2006, and production of the limited-edition bikes began last October. Production of all orders won't be completed until this December. For $72.5 G, owners get a three-year warranty and three years of scheduled maintenance, free of charge.
And what of the rumored Pitt-Cruise scrap?
"For the sake of keeping things straight," Canton says, "It never happened. Brad Pitt didn't have one on order."Read more: "New Ducati motorcycle is one sweet ride"
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