Outsider: Hardening up the Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled
If there?s a spiritual heir to the go-anywhere machines of the 1960s, it?s the Scrambler Ducati Desert Sled. Unlike most modern-day scramblers, the Duc is happy in the rough stuff. Even if it?s unlikely to be thrashed as much as the 1963 Bonneville that Bud Ekins built for Steve McQueen.
When our man Matt rode the Desert Sled a year ago at the launch in Spain, he was impressed: ?The Desert Sled is the scrambliest scrambler money can buy,? he said. But of course, some people will always want to push things further?and one of those folks is former Paris-Dakar Rally racer Fabio Marcaccini.
Fabio now runs Unit Garage from his base in a small town near the Adriatic coast, on the eastern seaboard of Italy. He makes kits that amp up the offroad performance of modern-day BMWs, Triumphs and Moto Guzzis. And he doesn?t sell farkles?he raced the Dakar five years in a row for Yamaha, so he knows what works and what doesn?t.
This prototype machine is called Fuoriluogo, which loosely translates to ?outsider? or ?out of place,? and Ducati supplied a Desert Sled to kick the project off.
The original idea came from Italian motojournalist Roberto Ungaro, formerly of the Italian magazine Riders. He suggested that Unit Garage developed a bike based on the Desert Sled?but Fabio decided to take the project a step further.
Instead of building a one-off, he proposed an easy-to-assemble kit that could go into production, and lift the off-road capabilities of the Ducati to new heights. Te...
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