Ducati Apollo

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Ducati Apollo

The Ducati Apollo is a motorcycle prototype from the Italian manufacturer Ducati , which was built in two copies and did not lead to series production.

history

In the early 1960s, the US importer Berliner Brothers Motor Corporation requested a motorcycle for the American authorities in order to put an end to the supremacy of Harley-Davidson and to book a piece of this lucrative business for themselves. Ducati's designers around Fabio Taglioni set out to develop a motorcycle that was to be far ahead of its time. The result was the four-cylinder Apollo in 1963, which, despite a displacement of 1260  cm³, had an astonishingly compact engine. In connection with a dry weight of 272 kg, however, the engine power was too much for the tires in use at the time, which dissolved during the test drives. None of the tire manufacturers at the time could solve this problem. Even reducing the engine to 48 kW / 65 PS did not have the desired effect. So the Apollo project was finally discontinued. Today there is only one copy that is privately owned by the Japanese collector Hiroaki Iwashita, who has made it available on permanent loan to the Ducati factory museum Museo Ducati in Bologna since 1996 .

The efforts for this motorcycle and especially for the engine should not have been in vain: After Taglioni was able to convince the Ducati superiors, who were more than suspicious of multi-cylinders after this misery, that a sporty two-cylinder was exactly the right thing for the current model range was, design features of the four-cylinder were carried over to a new generation of engines. In terms of layout, the Apollo's engine can be seen as the cornerstone of the Ducati twin-cylinder that has been built to date: V-angle of 90 ° with one cylinder in the airstream and one lying down.

Driving report

“The V4 produces its performance, which is still impressive today, with a kind of ease that one would hardly attribute to the 1960s. Compared with British twins before the Norton Isolastic era and with every Harley of this era, the Apollo looks like a sewing machine next to a cement mixer in terms of vibration behavior. At most a boxer BMW from this time offers comparable smoothness and driving comfort over the entire speed range. Out of respect for its uniqueness, I did not turn the V4 to the limit, but in the upper area it leaves the same calming, calm feeling that was characteristic of every Ducati V2 a decade later. When there were no four-cylinder engines on the market, not even the 1966 MV Agusta's 600 series, the Apollo would have set the standard in terms of performance and ride comfort and would have been the benchmark for the Japanese a decade later. The engine was way ahead of its time. [...] The Apollo is one of the great missed opportunities in motorcycle history - a shame, a shame! "

- Alan Cathcart : Motorcycle Classic

Technical specifications

  • Year of construction: 1963
  • Cylinder: V4 (Ducati designation: L4), 4-stroke
  • Displacement: 1260 cm³
  • Bore × stroke: 84.5 mm × 56 mm
  • Compression: 10: 1
  • OHV, 2 valves / cyl.
  • 4 × round slide carburetors, Dell'Orto SSI, ø32 mm
  • Power: 74 kW / 100 PS at 7000 rpm.
  • Empty weight: 272 kg
  • Chassis: backbone frame made of tubular steel, load-bearing engine
  • Wheel suspension: front Ceriani telescopic fork, Ø 38 mm, rear Ceriani double swing arm with two spring struts
  • Wheels: wire-spoke wheels, front and rear tires 5.00 × 16
  • Brakes: front simplex drum, Ø 220 mm, rear simplex drum, Ø 220 mm

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ducati Apollo in Motorrad Classic from June 5, 2009, accessed on November 22, 2014
  2. ^ Alan Cathcart: Ducati Apollo. In: Motorrad (magazine) . June 5, 2009, accessed November 22, 2014 .

Web links