Written by Andrew Jones
?I had bought, ridden, tracked and crashed more than a few Ducatis,? says San Francisco’s Alessandro Borroni. ?I felt that they lacked the soul and aesthetics of a bike that would make me want to get on and ride again and again. But there were parts of some Ducatis I thought were worth saving. Then one day I saw a Shinya Kimura custom and fell in love with the idea of doing a raw aluminum cafe racer with an exposed frame and integral, air-cooled motor. I had some ideas about how to do the build, but I knew I would need assistance from friends. Many friends.?

The build’s main elements are a ?06 Ducati 999 frame and a ?08 Ducati Monster S2R motor and swingarm; everything else is completely hand-made. ?The bike is named ?UNA,? Alessandro continues. ?I?m from Milan and in Italian, bikes and cars are females. I knew also that this build was going to be very unique. ?UNA? means ?one?, but in the female gender. I also had got creative and drawn out the number ?1? as the letters U, N and A stacked on top of each other, as you can see on the front plate.? Molto Italiano
Al sourced the bike with the help of Johann Keiser from Motomotivo, who builds Ducati-based café bikes using the 999 frame and tank and pairing them with the Monster air-cooled engines and trellis single-sided swingarms. ?We found a beat up Monster and took the engine and swingarm from it, and then sourced a 999 without an engine and used the frame and tank,? he notes.

?The ins...