I’ll admit, my knowledge of vintage Ducatis is rudimentary at best?so I always feel a little out of my depth when talking to Mike Watanabe. He and Luke Ransom run Union Motorcycle Classics out of a barn in Idaho, where they specialize in charming classics and restomods. And their knowledge runs deep.
Mike put that know-how to good use on his latest two projects: a pair of vintage Ducati singles with two very different vibes. The faired one is a 1971 450 Desmo, and the other is a 1965 250 single?but those designations are only loosely defined, because both were pieced together from parts of varying origins.

?I built both these bikes for myself,? Mike tells us. ?The shop is planning an invite-only Italian Singles tour next year, and we’re hoping to get some of our old builds back in town for that event. Maybe we’ll call it the Ida-lian Giro.? The 250’s a bike that Mike’s had for a while, and was originally pieced together from spare parts that were pulled off the shelf for another project. ?The pile of parts left over from that resto was in the shop,? says Mike, ?and I recognized that all the patina looked really balanced. I took that pile and assembled it into a running old survivor looking thing.?

Mike ran the 250 like that for a few years, then decided it deserved more attention. He took a wabi-sabi approach on the build?a Japanese design philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection. Anything that was already well worn was left alone, an...