Tricky road ahead for Ducati boss as motorbike company turns 100

Ducati’s headquarters at Borgo Panigale on the outskirts of Bologna is not so much a factory as a temple to the worship of the motorcycle.

In an age of AI and robotics, the first thing to strike a visitor is the level of handcraft on the factory floor as each bike is painstakingly built with minute attention to detail.

As the machines progress slowly along the production lines, workers move as if they were choreographed in a ballet.

Ducati – known as ‘la rossa’ because most of its bikes are sold in its trademark bright red – is legendary for its engineering, racing prowess and Italian style.

Claudio Domenicali, 60, one of Europe’s foremost industrialists, has worked there his entire career and has been chief executive since 2013.

The best part of his job, he says, is being part of a panel of 12 bosses who test prototypes once a month on the race track. He says: ‘It is much more enjoyable than the office.’

Thousands of Ducatisti, as devotees are known, will come from far and wide to celebrate the company’s 100th birthday on July 4 during World Ducati Week at the track in Misano on the Adriatic coast.

‘Or maybe the best part is when fans come to thank me,’ he reflects. ‘That’s when my wife has to remind me not to get too inflated about myself.’

But Ducati’s big birthday comes at a difficult time. The Iran war, which has sent the oil price soaring and hammered global stock markets, is obviously damaging for anyone selling luxury goods, including high-end motorcycles.

The most affordable Ducati is the Scrambler Dark at £9,495, and prices can go well into six figures.

Even before hostilities began in Iran, the firm was under pressure from US tariffs and unfavourable currency exchange rates.

Operating profits for 2025 fell to €52 million from €91million in the previous year.

‘We have a lot of headwinds,’ Domenicali admits. ‘These times are very challenging.

‘It is a much bigger problem than selling motorcycles.’

President Donald Trump’s tariffs, he says, are ‘mega, because the US is our biggest market’.

‘What can you do about it? Nothing,’ he says, adding: ‘The whole of Europe has been damaged quite a bit by rising costs for energy and rising costs for labour.’

Yet he believes that Ducati is well-placed to weather the storm, given its position at the top of the market. It has been owned since 2012 by Audi, part of Volkswagen, along with high-end car marques Lamborghini and Bentley. ‘We have been lucky that we have always had people in Audi who understood immediately the style, sophistication and performance,’ he says. ‘They let us reinvest the vast majority of profits into the company.’

The UK is ‘a very important market for us’, he adds, saying: ‘You have a long motorcycle culture and a lot of passion for bikes’.

British fans of Ducati include David Beckham and Prince William, who rode one through London on the eve of his wedding, as well as Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

Some of Ducati’s most successful riders are British, such as Carl Fogarty, who won four World Superbike championships in the 90s. The most revered was Mike ‘the Bike’ Hailwood, who was a boy wonder in the late 1950s and 1960s and won the Isle of Man TT in a spectacular 1978 comeback.

Britain is also home to the Ducati Dragons, an all-female riders’ club, with 450 members. Domenicali concedes women ‘are definitely our missed opportunity’, saying: ‘Only 10 per cent of riders are currently women so there is a lot of potential.’

Ageing populations in many of its markets are another challenge.

‘The average age of a UK client is 57, higher than the worldwide average of 48,’ Domenicali argues, saying the days are over when teenagers ‘couldn’t wait to be old enough to ride a motorcycle as that was freedom’.

Youngsters living in cities can get around easily on public transport and many prefer tapping away at their phones to whizzing around on a bike.

And while the Ducatisti may be getting older, they clearly feel younger, says Domenicali, adding: ‘There are people aged 75 who still ride a powerful Multistrada or a Panigale. It would have been unimaginable in the past.’

The love the bikes inspire lies in the firm’s roots in Emilia Romagna, Italy’s Motor Valley. He says: ‘Motor Valley is home to Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ducati, Pagani, Maserati, Dallara. There is so much connection between the people, the territory, the universities and the brand.

‘The intersection between design and technology, art and engineering, is one of our critical points. There is a Renaissance spirit but we think modern – like an AI-inspired Leonardo. We do not pretend to be mega-big. We aspire to be the best in the world at our speciality.’

The engineering is beautifully precise. Domenicali describes how moving the pivot point where the swing-arm connects to the frame by just 4 millimetres on the 2022 Panigale V4 makes a huge difference to the bike’s handling.

That tiny adjustment means the bike squats less under acceleration and is easier to ride.

‘You need an uncommon level of riding skill to appreciate that,’ Domenicali says. ‘It is like a fine wine, you need to educate yourself for a full appreciation.’

Will Ducati be going electric? The single biggest challenge, he says, is the weight of the battery, which either makes the bike too heavy or reduces the range.

‘We are ten to 15 years away from having the battery technology we need, minimum.’

As well as the factory, the Borgo Panigale HQ houses a museum of bikes from over the decades, overseen by curator Livio Lodi, an inexhaustible one-man font of facts.

Ducati started out manufacturing radio components but, in the late 1940s, moved into motorbikes to meet the demand for cheap transportation in post-War Italy. It created the Cucciolo, Italian for puppy, which was a small engine that could be fitted to any bicycle.

Fast-forward eight decades and the firm has just unveiled its most extreme road-legal bike, the Superleggera V4 Centenario, in a limited edition of 500, at £135,000 each. It uses Ducati’s famous desmodromic distribution system which lets valves open and close more efficiently and engines rev higher.

True to its name – Superleggera is Italian for super-light – it weighs just 173 kilos and can deliver 228 horsepower. Domenicali says: ‘It is a bike no other manufacturer has been able to do. It is a technological statement.’

Ducati dominates MotoGP, the motorcycle equivalent of Formula 1. Domenicali says: ‘I have been working for this company for 35 years and I still cry when we win a race. There is a saying ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’, which is very nice but unfortunately not true. It is about the long-term building of the brand.

‘Having said that, racing victory is unbeatable by any other type of marketing because you cannot buy that success.’

US entertainment giant Liberty Media, the owner of Formula 1, last year bought Dorna, which holds the commercial and TV rights to MotoGP. The F1 audience has grown dramatically, attracting younger fans thanks in part to the Netflix series Drive To Survive. Domenicali hopes there will be a similar effect for MotoGP.

‘We are quite excited about the potential of getting our sport more popular, beyond the hardcore bikers, without taking anything out,’ he says. So is Ducati an engineering or an entertainment company?

‘We are an entertainment company – made by engineers.’