Ducati Hypermotard 1100 (2007-current)

The Hypermotard sounded like everything I wanted in my next bike: light, nimble, very quick, stunning looks, and hooligan character. I recently took a dealer demo 1100S for a test ride, and it firmly changed my opinion.

As an old roadracer, I appreciate a stiff setup as much as anybody, as it's critical for getting the power to the rear tire. However, this bike was abusively stiff. Not only was it stiff, there was absolutely no feedback from the rear end. It was so bad it made me question whether I even knew how to ride a motorcycle. I was bounced across the road everytime I crossed a seam or bump mid-corner, and frequently ran wide at corner exits unless I was fully committed and could get the power down. All these things are manageable on the racetrack where you can dial in geometry and suspension settings to correct for them, but I thought this bike was being positioned as an urban motorcycle - and I found it a real burdon to ride around the bumpy streets of San Francisco. (I much prefered the 1098 Streetfighter, which I rode next.)

Now a few caveats: I only rode the bike downtown; it's probably better in the mountains once you get into 4-5th gear and have some smoother, mid-speed corners. It'll probably be better once the bike has more miles (this one had about 1k miles) as the suspension breaks in; it'll also get better once you take some preload and compression damping out of the rear, and slow down the rebound damping (hard to do on a 45-min test ride). And it might be more familiar if you come from a MX background. I will try the 796 to see whether it's any better, but despite the general consensus, I was unfortunately unimpressed with the 1100S.