Vee Two Super Squalo - Swift Shark

The guy in front of me on the Hayabusa obviously knew his way around the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course. Judging by his inch-perfect line through the fast, sweeping Tower Bends turns leading up to the Gooseneck, he could have been a former TT racer like me, taking advantage of the Centenary TT festival fortnight rule of one-way traffic over the mountain. This enabled both of us to use racing lines on the road without having to deal with opposing traffic, and as we braked for the tight right-hander at Guthrie's leading onto the "Mountain Mile"-one of the fastest parts of the TT Course-I knew it would be a prime opportunity to see how the Vee Two Super Squalo I was riding would fare against the quickest and fastest production motorcycle made today.

It was no contest. As we entered the wide-open run, the Suzuki's front wheel popped up a bit as its rider got on the throttle, scorching into the right-hander leading onto the flat-out section. But the Super Squalo was keeping a comfy pace a bike-length or two behind, and once I wound on the throttle, the supercharger's distinctive whine and the desmo V-twin's raucous exhaust note merged into one as the Super Squalo rocketed past the Suzuki with ease. Although the section is fast, the road is somewhat narrow, so I only saw the Hayabusa once in my rearview monitor screen-yep, no mirrors on this bike, just a 3.5-inch screen atop the upper triple clamp linked to a rear-facing camera.

Utilizing a Ducati 999S engine and chassis with streetfighter bodywork by designer John Keogh, the heart of the Super Squalo is the surprisingly compact Sprintex supercharger that force-feeds the 999cc Testastretta motor. The resulting 203.9 horsepower and 124 ft.-lbs. of torque produced by this radical-looking V-twin projectile surely establish it as a new benchmark in two-wheeled street performance. And at a price of $45,000, it's cheaper than the only comparable product, Ducati's own Desmosedici RR. And I'd be willing to bet the Aussie-built streetfighter not only has equivalent real-world performance to that MotoGP replica, but also much greater practicality.

Yet the numbers speak for themselves. And after spending a week riding the Super Squalo around the Isle of Man, I reckon the bike's builders-Perth, Australia-based Vee Two-are erring on the side of discretion in their power claims. This is the most intoxicating, enthralling and downright thrilling street-legal motorcycle I've ever ridden, where just turning the ignition key is the passport to spine-tingling thrills and all-out excitement in a package that's still totally ridable in everyday use. Sitting in heavy traffic during the TT in Douglas offered ample opportunities to confirm that aspect, where the Super Squalo was no more out of sorts inching forward in traffic-clogged streets or puttering along at 30 mph than the normally aspirated Ducati 999S it once was. Only the typically stiff-action stock Ducati dry clutch made this hard work.

"We wanted to demonstrate to our satisfaction that the Super Squalo really is as practical yet performing in real-world riding conditions, as it's proved to be in our extensive development testing back home," said Tony Hamilton, CEO of Australian Automotive Components in Malaga, a suburb of Perth. AAC is the largest manufacturer of superchargers in the Southern Hemisphere under the Sprintex name, for both automotive and industrial use, and purchased world-renowned Ducati performance specialists Vee Two Australia in February 2005 from its retired founder, Brook Henry. "There's nowhere else in the world with de-restricted roads where you can unleash the true potential of a bike like this properly," Hamilton added. "Well, except the German autobahns, and they're multilane freeways where acceleration's less important. So we've decided to send the bike to the Island for some rigorous real-world testing, which we're confident it'll pass with flying colors."

That it did, on the only everyday roads in the world with no speed limits outside of towns and villages. Despite its unrivaled performance, the Super Squalo uses the stock Ducati 999S engine and chassis, complete with Brembo radial-mount calipers and fully adjustable hlins suspension front and rear. Braking petal discs are carried on S4R Monster forged-aluminum Marchesini wheels shod with Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa Pro rubber, the rear mounted on a special Vee Two single-sided swingarm fabricated from TS23 steel tubing. "That swingarm is what every ducatista in the world wants on a desmo V-twin," Henry said. "The 999 is a wonderful bike to ride; it just needs a bit more power. So rather than create a 1200cc version like Ducati is doing with the 1098R-which I guess will still be a bit on the limp-wristed side-we did the job properly and supercharged it!" The result has been clothed in bodywork by British designer Keogh to resemble one of the fearsome blue sharks that roam the West Australian coastline (squalo means shark in Italian), and it's just as predatory a form of two-wheeled life as its marine namesake.

Supercharging is a forced-induction technology whose time is long overdue on two wheels, seeing as how so many car manufacturers have already embraced it: Lancia, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Cadillac, Aston Martin, BMW (with the Mini Cooper S), and so on. Using a mechanically driven supercharger to compress the intake charge doesn't bring the same attendant problems of throttle lag, extra heat and increased bulk that turbos do, while delivering comparable power. Before the Sprintex supercharger, however, the extra weight of the supercharger, and the power required to drive it mechanically, made supercharging unattractive for any street-going application on two wheels.

But with this new generation of lighter, more compact and efficient compressors- and the technology to govern them via electronics-that's all changed. Advanced engine management permits engineers to control boost according to throttle opening, gear selected, rpm and road speed, enhancing both torque and top-end performance without impacting fuel economy.

The Sprintex supercharger comprises twin intermeshing helical-screw rotors-one convex and one concave-that counter-rotate inside an alloy housing machined from solid billet. This design compresses the charge between the rotors and the housing before expelling it into the intake manifold, differentiating it from other types of superchargers. For instance, a centrifugal blower uses a rotating impeller to accelerate air to high velocity, creating pressure as airflow backs up within the port; a Roots-type blower uses two counter-rotating vanes to force a given amount of air into the discharge port with each rotation, again creating pressure in the manifold through compounding intake charges. "The difference between ours and the others is that they just blow air into the plenum chamber, whereas ours compresses the air inside the blower," Henry explained. "The great advantage is a lower discharge temperature, which creates a denser charge and greater volumetric efficiency and is the reason we don't need an intercooler and can also run a stock Ducati radiator. We use 8 psi pressure for the Super Squalo but can tweak it up to 20 psi if needed because the Sprintex unit has adjustable boost for high-performance applications like dragracing. But it's important to stress that this is an entirely bolt-on package; you could switch the motor back to stock if you wanted."

The Sprintex compressor unit on the Super Squalo is compact enough to fit between the framerails, sitting underneath the stock 999S fuel tank astride a billet aluminum plenum chamber that replaces the stock 999S airbox and throttle bodies. A single 60mm Vee Two-manufactured throttle body with a single butterfly valve controls the airflow to the compressor. However-and here's the patented secret of the Super Squalo's ridability-there is an additional valve mounted in the inlet tract aft of the compressor for each cylinder acting as a check valve, with the twin injectors for each cylinder (four in total) positioned side by side just past the valve. These are staged to operate sequentially, with one injector squirting fuel to each cylinder until boost pressure rises sufficiently to require more fuel. Then the MoTeC ECU activates the second injector, usually around 6000 rpm accelerating wide open, although boost is the determining factor rather than rpm or throttle position, Henry stressed. This also allows the standard 999S fuel pump to be retained instead of opening up the stock fuel tank to fit a bigger, heavier fuel pump.

The check valves are vacuum-operated via a diaphragm, although that in turn is electronically controlled by the ECU. This balances the charge at low rpm to ensure smooth running and a responsive pickup on part throttle, the trick of this patented Sprintex system in making such a powerful bike ridable off-boost. "We've had a lot of interest from several factories about this feature," Henry admitted. "The Ducati engineers who came to examine it when we launched the bike at the Misano World Superbike round in June 2006 were surprisingly switched on about supercharging, as are several other factories who've contacted us. I suspect there's a lot of compressor projects being worked on in R&D shops around the world. But we're the first to bring it to the marketplace and with a technology that delivers the performance in a very usable way. Set up like this, the engine idles as sweetly as it does when stock and pulls away cleanly off-boost."

The Super Squalo accomplishes that easily, but as soon as you flick open the light-action throttle-remember, you're just opening a single butterfly valve-Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde, and the bike gulps down scenery at an alarming rate. The stainless steel 2-into-1-into-2 Vee Two exhaust has long, separate, ceramic-coated headers running to a collector under the seat that sprouts twin, short exit pipes, and it already sounds quite hard-edged at idle or running through town. But once the throttle is opened, the Super Squalo is positively strident in the way it barks out a warning to all within earshot. The motor completely fulfills the expectations of supercharged performance, with eyeball-flattening acceleration accompanied by zero throttle lag from 3000 rpm on up; the throttle is basically an amplified speed rheostat, with velocity seemingly tied directly to its rotation.

The distinctive whine of the supercharger is audible at just about any speed, almost as a warning to the rider to prepare for phenomenal power production from the 204-horsepower motor. The Super Squalo will power-wheelie with ridiculous ease in third gear despite being geared to run more than 190 mph, and you need to be careful with how you twist the throttle while leaned over in turns because of the engine's enormous potential. And yet, by no means is the powerband uncontrollable or vicious; the engine's impressively flat torque curve translates to a surprisingly manageable and user-friendly machine-given the proper respect, of course.

The only drawback to the whole installation is the 19 pounds of weight from the supercharger installation, a good portion of which is mounted rather high up in the frame. Its forward location does at least load up the front wheel a little more than stock, and I can't say I noticed any adverse handling feel. However, opting for the more conservative 24.5-degree head angle on the Ducati frame's adjustable steering head may have helped overcome this. The bike felt well balanced, steered well in faster turns and didn't feel like it wanted to fall into the apex of slower ones.

But the single most impressive feature of the Sprintex package powering the Super Squalo is the humongous torque the compressor delivers. "The big difference is that the stock Ducati motor makes its maximum torque at 8000 rpm, so pretty close to redline," Tony Hamilton said. "Ours makes 80 percent of its peak torque at 3000 rpm and carries right on making it all the way through to five figures." Torque counts for more than horsepower in delivering real-world performance; that's what produces acceleration the moment you open the throttle. Boost produces torque, but because a supercharger's pressure is rpm-related due to the compressor being tied to the crankshaft, that torque begins early (unlike a turbo that needs to be spooled up) and continues well on up into the higher rpm ranges. Until 15 years ago, supercharging was traditionally for full-throttle dragracing applications, and part-throttle/low-rpm ridability suffered as a result. But the refinement and additional control made possible by new-generation blowers and modern electronics has transformed the way supercharging is now used. A brave new world of forced induction awaits us, and Vee Two's customers for the Super Squalo will be the first to experience the benefits-and the thrill-of using it.

"When it comes to new technology and innovative engineering, nobody dares risk being first, but nobody wants to be second," Hamilton said. "Sprintex is so confident of the benefits of our technology, we offer to develop a dedicated supercharging package for manufacturers on a no-risk basis. They don't pay us a cent up front, until we prove to them that it works. That's the way we've successfully developed our links in the automotive sector, and we've already begun doing the same thing with bikes. The Super Squalo is our calling card to demonstrate the exciting potential that supercharging offers."

After spending a week with the bike riding on the streets of the Isle of Man, we'd be surprised if the line of manufacturers doesn't begin forming soon.