We’ve had far too many Ducati Supersports pass through the loving arms of Icon for it to be a coincidence. In fact it’s difficult to remember a time when the iconic aircooled desmo was not intertwined with the Icon mythology. Which is odd, as most would consider Icon and Ducati to be the polar ends of the motorcycling world. Similar perhaps to where the time/space continuum actually bends back upon itself until the two most distant points converge? Or perhaps it’s just that we like messing about with sexy, exotic things. Hey Ducati, if your out there reading this – how about a donating a late model for Team Icon makeover? We promise not to gut it too bad.
If we had a nickel for every piece of Supersport fairing we had sitting in the Icon warehouse we would be rich men. Unfortunately Supersport fairing are worth decidedly less than a nickel.
Generally our association with a Ducati starts shortly after someone else has just finished theirs. The Operator started life no different. We got this thing for a sweet deal. The story goes that it was stolen and in the course of the joyride, wheelied over backwards. Most bikes can handle that kind of abuse and still fetch a fair price. Luckily for us, Ducatis can not. You see, most Ducatistas aren’t doing their bike shopping out of the Nickel Trader. They prefer getting tapped in the clean confines of an OE dealer while Swedish techno reverberates softly over German speakers. Icon on the other hand is not too proud to beg, barter, or borrow our bikes. So we offered the towing company a trade of two Home Depot gift cards, four cans of baby formula, a Hi Point .45, and $1300 cash for this fine bit of Italian kit. Sure the plastics and most of the subframe were scattered over a half acre of corn, but the price was right and the motor ran reasonably quiet. So it was back to the Icon lab to complete the metamorphosis of this rancid tent worm into a beautiful olive drab shitemoth. Some angle grinding, alloy bending, and rattle canning and she was ready to roll. The previous owner rode her like he stole her, which he did. We ride her like we hate her, which we don’t, but its a clever thing to say.
As is common place in almost all Ducati modifications - off with the subframe and on with the ammo cans.