Recently, we featured this incredible CB900F Bol d’Or scrambler by the crew at Vonsmotz. Now builders Richard and Lex have returned with “El Chapo,” another scrambler based on an unexpected platform. This time it’s a 1994, full-fairing Ducati 750SS. The Ducati SuperSport (SS) bikes were built from 1988 to 2001, a series of air-cooled, 2-valve desmodromic V-twins.
Hunter S. Thompson said it best of the Ducati SS in his piece “Song of the Sausage Creature”:
“The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it…
The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast – it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things… It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time…”
The boys at Vonsmotz, however, wanted to build an answer to the new Ducati Scrambler–a true, mean, low-down, dirt-ready machine. What a job they’ve done.
Custom Ducati SS: “El Chapo”
First the Ducati was stripped to the bone. Gone were the fairings, and anything that would weigh the bike down. The rear subframe is completely custom, with a luggage rack welded in. The team went with a beat-up tank, to give the bike for a “pure old skool” look. The tires are TKC80 models for those muddy roads, and the bike has fenders front and rear. They rounded out the build with a pair of canvas luggage bags strapped to that beautiful exposed trellis frame, as well as a 70s headlight for that vintage enduro look.
If you don’t think this Duc makes it off-road, you’re wrong. Take a look at the team’s Instagram to see this custom Ducati scrambler in the wild:
@vonsmotz
