Five minutes on board the Ducati Hypermotard and you instinctually want to do bad things. Suddenly riding on sidewalks feels normal and romping through parks seems appropriate. The Hyper, with its narrow seat, wide handlebars and supermoto-like feel just seems to bring out the adventurous little six-year-old within us all. Of course, performing any of these acts (or any other your inner child is dying to try) is surely to result in a less than pleasurable encounter with the Boys in Blue. You could say that this is the point though, as this is the machine that a few select Italian designers envisioned as their true play bike whenever they weren't conjuring up the latest and greatest racing machine.
First shown to the public at the 2005 EICMA show in Milan, the original Hypermotard wasn't originally planned for production-it was merely a design exercise to gauge public reaction. However, after the immensely positive responses it received, Ducati quickly reacted and put the bike into production in 2007. In its first year the bike was a smashing hit both in Europe and the U.S. Its 1100cc
Desmodue dual-spark engine lifted straight from the Multistrada proved to be the perfect powerplant. In the years since, the Hyper has continued its success in Europe and is the second most popular Ducati behind the company's Superbikes. In Italy, there's even a spec class to race the Hypermotard called the Desmo Challenge. Here at home, sales have waned a little due to this country's love for the Monster line.
Still, three years is a long time for any performance-oriented machine to remain unchanged, especially when the rest of its siblings are all getting upgrades. Ducati engineers thought this too, and in between laying out the next Superbike they looked at the next version of the Hypermotard 1100. An
evolution, if you will. The result is what you see on these pages-the Ducati Hypermotard 1100 Evo and Evo SP (Can you guess what the Evo stands for?) As with any evolution of a breed, the design focus here centered around two key points: more power and less weight. Yes those are popular catch phrases when it comes to new models, but considering the original Hypermotard was essentially a stripped down Multistrada, putting it on a diet and giving it some more grunt was hardly a tall order.