Ducati's Streetfighter V4 prototype looks like it wants to steal your lunch money
The new hypernaked bike from Ducati is looking to take a big bite out of the Aprilia Tuono's lunch once it debuts at Pikes Peak.
Ducati's Panigale V4 is one hell of a machine, with its wild styling, totally bananas 214-horsepower V4 engine and piles of technology. Its biggest downfall as far as I can tell is that it's packaged as a sportbike.
This is why the Aprilia Tuono has been such an easy bike to love and so much of a touchstone for people who love bikes. It has all the nutty superbike performance you could want, but it actually verges on being comfortable to ride for more than 20 minutes at a time.
Ducati is tired of letting Aprilia have all the fun in the hypernaked category, so it's taking its V4 Panigale and removing much of the fairing, putting taller handlebars on it and calling it the Streetfighter V4. Oh, and it's making its debut in prototype form at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which the company announced on Thursday.
Ducati is playing things pretty close to its chest when it comes to any nonaesthetic differences between the Streetfighter and the Panigale, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd bet that it loses a few of its top-end horsepower in exchange for better midrange performance as would befit a more street-biased naked bike.
The bike will make its production debut at EICMA later this year, and we can expect more technical details at that time. We also know that it's slated to hit Ducati dealers in the spring of 2020.
