Ducati Streetfighter 848 promises sub £10k price

Ducati is pitching its new Streetfighter 848 into a less expensive and more fiercely fought sector of the naked bike market with a new model that will cost less than £10,000 in the UK.

The current Streetfighter is only available in ultra-expensive 1099cc V-twin form with the cheapest model starting at £12,095 and rising to a whopping £14,695 for the higher-specification ‘S’ version.

Ducati hope the new Streetfighter 848 which takes the Testastretta 11 engine from the 848 Evo supersports bike will be less fierce and take on the best-sellers in the class like the Triumph Speed Triple.

Ducati isn’t revealing exact technical details of the new 848 Streetfighter but we would expect the 140bhp 849cc engine with the 11 degree of valve overlap version of the Testastretta Evoluzione engine seen in the 848Evo to carry over slightly changed. MCN understands that means 132bhp will be backed up by a beefy 69ft lb of torque which when combined with an expected 185kg kerbweight will still make for blistering performance.

The Evo engine will see the back of the dry clutch in the Streetfighter; a traditional engineering element that is increasingly being shunned because of noise regulations.

Other changes to the Streetfighter, which are almost certainly going to be carried over to an overhauled bigger capacity version later this year are numerous cosmetic tweaks along with taking the front brakes from the Monster 1100 Evo.

A new heat shield has been designed around the riders’ legs, the engine is now more neatly covered and goes a long way to clearing up some of the messy design from the current Streetfighter engine.

One big design issue the Streetfighter has always suffered from is the fact the water-cooled Testastretta superbike engine was always intended to the covered by a fairing and looked messy without one on the naked Streetfighter.