Well you escalated this thread quickly, didn't you!
Knowing the people who run my local Ducati dealership as well as I do, and knowing others at other Ducati dealerships... You'd be surprised how few Ducati's are purchased on PCP deals. Obviously the lower end stuff, Scramblers, normal Monsters (people earlier in this thread are forgetting that this £16k Monster 30th anniversary is a ltd edition, heavily pimped up, price tag heavily inflated version of a more "affordable" model) etc. get PCP'ed reasonably regularly, but the higher end stuff, the ltd editions, anything with a big price tag... People aren't PCPing these for the most part, not just cos Ducati finance is never particularly competitive (get a bank loan, it's cheaper), but simply put... They don't need to!
Ducati aren't making £40k Panigale V4R's, £30k Multistrada Pikes Peaks or even £16k Monster 30th Anniversary models to appeal to the masses. They have a very, very limited appeal. But there's always someone with enough cash to buy these bikes as long as supply never exceeds demand... There is a very real difference between actual value for money and the perception of value for money... You can go into a Suzuki dealership right now, get a brand new Suzuki GSXS1000 for £10k on 2% APR finance... It's an £11.5k bike, but they have made more than they could sell, and we're heading into winter. Suzuki dealerships (like most motorbike dealerships) are struggling to pay the bills, so are selling a few off at almost cost price, backed up by Suzuki's own finance which means that someone can stick about £2k down and have a brand new 150bhp motorbike for £100 a month (and when the APR is so low, this is the time to PCP rather than to pay for it outright if you were actually going to buy one anyway). By contrast, you won't get a penny off any higher end Ducati models (yes Ducati are doing £500 contribution on Monsters at the moment, but only off the base model, not the 30th anniversary model, because for those denying its potential appeal, it has ALREADY SOLD OUT despite not even having hit showrooms yet!!!), you'll be lucky on most Ducati models that if you put a deposit on one now that you'll receive it within 6 months...
I appreciate that the Missenden Flyer has a fair reach through his Youtube channel, but have you actually watched much of his content? I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt... There's journalists and youtube reviewers that I thoroughly respect for their opinions (not many I'll admit, but the likes of Michael Neeves from MCN, Chris Northover,the 44T boys, Mossy, Lamb Chop to a degree, these guys can all ride and know what they're talking about), TMF isn't one of them... That said, everything is personal... A stock Monster is £11.5k, the Monster SP is £14k... For your extra £2.5k you get upgrades from budget unadjustable suspension to full Ohlins kit that's fully adjustable, a Termignoni exhaust system (albeit still with cat in place), and the Brembo M4.32 calipers go in favour of some significantly upgraded Brembo Stylema's. Personally, I actually think that's pretty good VFM for only an extra £2.5k, it turns an ostensibly fun and fairly capable machine at a brisk pace into one with the chassis and stopping power to cope with some serious abuse too. The 30th anniversary adds forged wheels as well as the Italian flag paint job for an extra £2k again... Worth it? Well none of us will find out any time soon, cos like I say... They're all sold already!I watched the Missenden Flyer (is that the correct name?) on Youtube testing the SP and he didn't seem overly excited by it, IIRC he said the SP bits weren't worth the premium over the standard bike.
You know the 937cc Testastretta engine (sometimes called a 939, sometimes a 950) isn't the same as the 959cc Superquadro engine right...?I’ve ridden three models from Ducati with the 939/959 engine that’s in the desert x, hyper and supersport and it’s a rubbish twin. Nothing like the old torquey air cooled motors and not a patch on small twins from other manufacturers.
Also, you know that it absolutely pisses all over the old air cooled 2V motors both in terms of torque and horsepower! In fact, it's more potent than a 90's 916 engine, and far more tractable too... I've ridden a couple, it's a lovely motor, pulls hard from almost no revs, very smooth for a twin, pretty rewarding revving it out too albeit it doesn't have a mad top end rush, but it's still a nice motor. In a Monster it's a peach! You're talking about a bike that's a few bhp and Nm up on a 916, and about 30kg lighter to boot... It's a potent bike!
The 959cc Superquadro engine is in the Panigale V2 and Streetfighter V2. This is a much racier engine, bigger bore, shorter stroke, much larger valves, more valve overlap, fully chain driven (no belts) and much bigger throttle bodies too... Revs much higher, but subesequently feels a bit gutless below about 6krpm, whereafter it really comes alive.
This is the thing. You either get Ducati, or you don't... On the face of it, they're mostly terrible value. But for many people, motorbikes are highly emotive, and spending disproportionately more for that last few % of X Factor isn't an issue if they can actually afford it. If you're the kind of person who'd struggle to justify spending £100 a month on a PCP for a new Suzuki, then there's no way I could ever convince you that a Ducati is "worth" it... One of my riding buddies has bought 3 new Ducati's already this year and has a 4th on the way... No, he's not a professional footballer, but his salary could buy my house outright several times per year. Given Ducati's hold their money pretty well typically and he doesn't have any other vices, it's pretty easy for him to justify the perhaps £8-10k in depreciation annually that he experiences running these bikes as a relatively cheap form of entertainment! He wouldn't even have a clue where the nearest Suzuki dealership was, the brand simply hasn't even entered his conscious...For £16k I could of bought my GSXS1000 and had £8k to spend on beer.
I agree, I think it's insane for what it is, but they seem to sell well enough so they probably know their target audience and we're obviously not it.
Just to reinforce my point... Trust me... You couldn't be further from the truth!I think that without creative debt options to buy them then most of these bikes wouldn’t even get made.
I’m struggling to imagine there being a queue of punters willing to part with sixteen grand in cash for one of these.
PCP is for more mainstream stuff... I bought a Yamaha MT-10 5yrs ago, they were shocked I wanted to buy it rather than PCP it (I had the cash, but a bank loan would have been 2.9% at that time anyway, and Yamaha's finance was 8.9% at the time). They said of the 250+ bikes they'd sold that year, I was only the 4th person to actually pay outright for one!
My local Ducati dealership however... They don't even ask the customer about financing, it's expected that the customer has the means to pay, and that they will ask about finance options if they can't or don't want to pay outright for the bike...
