A NAKED SUPERBIKE, along the lines of the bonkers Streetfighter, could be one step closer as Italian design house, Officine GP Design, have unveiled a naked Panigale V4.
Designed by Luca Pozzato, the bike takes a stock V4S and adds custom spoked wheels by Jonich SX, oodles of bronze powder coating and a crazy Ariel Ace style girder front end. The seat unit is a trimmed, stubby affair. Which sadly means the lucky owner won’t be able to take his friend along for the ride, this version at least is a monoposto or single seat.
By far the most drastic change to the machine from standard, apart form the lack of fairing, is the girder front end instead of forks. If you look closely the small emblem on the bottom of the arm says FG Racing and the shock mounted just above the headstock looks to be an Ohlins unit. The headlight will be familiar to an XDiavel owners and the seat is a leather stitched item crafted Foglizzo, who specialise in high-end leather products.
With no price mentioned on the GP Design site, we can only assume it’s a case of ‘if you have to ask you can’t afford it’! Some quick mental maths, taking into account a donor bike and the parts involved would say you looking at £70k, at least before this machine is sitting in your garage.
So, does this mean we will see an official Ducati super-naked in years to come? I wouldn’t bet against it. Rumours of a V4 engined naked from the Borgo Panigale have circulated since Ducati pulled the covers off the new V4 platform and it’s a niche in the market they’ve let get away from them since they stopped producing the Streetfighter in 2015. There is also a massive amount of love for the 1098 and 848 based machines – especially in southern Europe. I was at World Ducati Week last year and the place was crawling with Streetfighters. I certainly don’t think Ducati would have a problem shifting them if they did put one into production.
For more information on the V4 Penta, click here.
To read our full review of the V4 Panigale, click here.
