Verona Motor Bike Expo

In a time when the traditional Turin Auto Show just shut down for good, and the Bologna Motor Show is badly limping along, the two-year old Verona Motor Bike Show is proving to be a huge success.

The two-day event mostly focuses on the world of custom, specials, and tuner bikes. The motorcycle industry has taken note. The Verona Show is still largely focused on custom bikes and their tuners, but this year it grew much larger including major manufacturers displaying their production models. Racing teams also put their bikes and riders on display where they were easily accessible to the fans.

The dominate force at the short weekend show is Harley-Davidson, filling both the specialty customs section and the regular production model area. After all, the show was born around the passion for Harleys and the Milwaukee guys deserve the biggest slice of the cake.

But the show has become a full-flagged-international event, attended by major specialists from all over Europe, and America. Although nothing from the major manufacturers was new, with most of their bikes already unveiled at EICMA, Ducati went a step further and decided to show off a bunch of really cool customs. It emphasis was on the new XDiavel and Scramblers that had been customized by various builders that it supports.

The real surprise from Ducati was the draXter, an XDiavel reworked by the men of the Ducati Design Center who created this aggressive-looking black and yellow bike, which has been executed beautifully. On the technical side of the project, they replaced the fat 240/50-17 rear Pirelli Diablo Rosso radial with a huge squared off dragster style rear slick. Say goodbye to the stock bike's class-leading 40-degrees of lean. Power comes from the new 1262cc Testastretta, with DVT, a 13:1 compression ratio and a claimed 156 horsepower at 9500 RPM and 96.6 lb.-ft. of peak torque 5000 RPM. A special two-into-one Termignoni exhaust featuring huge diameter tail pipes has been fitted for a barking sound, while the electronics include launch-control software. Let's hope some of the cool styling elements make their way onto a future production Diavel.