Serendipity just falls your way sometimes. You meet the love of your life in an elevator. The car that just passed you hits the deer. Or the fortunes of your company soar on the basis of a single event. Such is the case of Ducati, which in 1972 was a little-known Italian manufacturer of buzzy single-cylinder road bikes. That is until April 23, when everything changed as 29-year-old Englishman Paul Smart outran the best Formula 750 bikes and riders in the world to win the inaugural Imola 200, the Daytona of Europe, on the company's brand-new 750. Surprised? Most everyone was. "Before the race, people thought me riding a Ducati at Imola was a joke," Smart recalls today. "No one had ever heard of a V-twin Ducati."
That would quickly change. Enthused with the victory of Ducati's first big bike in its maiden race, company management announced a road-going version of the Imola racer. Delightfully, when it arrived two years later, the '74 750 Super Sport really was a race replica-and the most audacious streetbike of its time. With an exotic desmodromic valve train, gigantic pumper carbs, triple disc brakes and the sexiest bodywork this side of Brigitte Bardot, the limited-production "greenframe" soon became iconic on street and track.
Fast forward three decades, and with retro fever gripping manufacturers from Apple to Zippo, it was inevitable that Ducati would spin its venerable two-valve air-cooled powertrain into the Paul Smart 1000 Limited Edition to celebrate what is arguably the company's most important race win. But how faithfully does it follow the tire tracks of its ancestors? We wanted to know.
Smart has ridden his Imola winner occasionally over the years, had once sampled an original greenframe in the U.K. and has enjoyed the occasional whirl on the new PS1000 LE. But he never rode all three bikes in sequence to measure the genetic evolution that his Imola triumph began and said he'd like to try. With Smart willing and Willow Springs Raceway available, all we needed were the bikes.
Seven Imola racers made the short trip from Ducati's Borgo Panigale race shop to Imola in '72 and three are known to exist in original form today-including Smart's race-winner, which he was given after the event and still owns. According to the best knowledge available, the bike seen here is his backup machine from Imola that later raced in Europe, Canada and Africa. Fortunately, it's slightly easier to find an original 750 Super Sport streetbike, and this example is a solid runner showing 15,600 kilometers on its Smiths speedometer. Outfitted with grippy new Avon classic racing rubber to match the Imola racer's, it was ready to prove its heritage on the track. Finally, with most of the new PS1000 LEs now in private hands, we were lucky to find Eric Beaman, the lead mechanic at Southern California Ducati, willing to turn his personal bike over to Motorcyclist for testing-with the only proviso that it return bearing Mr. Smart's signature.
Nobody was in much of a hurry to ride anything when black ice greeted us in the pits at Willow on a subfreezing morning in January. And yet, as the winter sun tracked across the desert skies, eventually enough heat baked into the track surface to make hot lapping possible. Smart first went out on his namesake, the PS1000 LE, to familiarize himself with The Fastest Road in the West. He liked it, and with just a few laps of reconnaissance was ready for the program.
First up was the '72 Imola racer. Far from the nearly stock machines that Ducati publicized, the Formula 750 bikes actually used special frames, highly modified engines with racing crankshafts, primary drives, valve train, twin-plug ignition, carburetion, oiling and exhaust systems, plus the triple disc brakes, Ceriani shocks, a giant fuel cell and roadracing bodywork. Stock appearing though they might have been, they were highly developed machines credited with making 84 horsepower from their 748cc displacement-a very respectable 112 bhp per liter, even by today's standards. With appropriate gearing, Smart reckons they were good for 150 mph in '72. We push-start Smart and a sharp staccato bark jumps from the unique high/low megaphones, so configured to provide cornering clearance for Imola's predominantly left-hand turns.
Smart accelerates the Imola racer by on his first hot lap, his black leathers and white helmet virtual carbon copies of 35 years ago. This 63-year-old can still fly, and many laps later he returns the bike with the right-side pipe scuffed and the tires feathered to the edges. Smart is credited with developing the modern hanging-off cornering style that virtually every roadracer uses today. It was born of necessity. "I didn't go racing until age 22; I just rode bikes on the street," he explained. "Then I went to the MCC High Speed Trials at Silverstone on an old BSA and it dragged terribly. I hung off the thing just to keep the undercarriage off the road. Kenny Roberts later complimented me by saying he learned a lot about body weight control by following me at Ontario."
As for the high points of the original Formula 750 Imola racer: "It's incredibly torquey, isn't it?" he began. "It has big old carburetors and basic ignition, but the thing works so well. That's the advantage of the desmodromic system-because you can open and close the valves a lot quicker, you can put more efficient ramps on the cams. And considering the age of the thing, it does handle. Its geometry is all wrong with a long wheelbase and a fork angle of who knows what, but it behaves itself extremely well, doesn't require a lot of rider input and the brakes are faultless. The biggest Achilles' heel is it's so long you have to crank it to get through tight corners. Also the riding position where you're sitting well back and low with your knees under your chin feels strange. But those motorcycles were just right. They were easy on the rider and relaxing to ride. I honestly can't fault it."
Thanks to the commitment of Ducati executive Fredmano Spairani and the genius of engineer Fabio Taglioni, the 750 Super Sport went into series production in January 1974. Though outfitted with a new frame, street equipment, a downsized fuel cell and abbreviated fairing, it was still the progeny of the Imola racer. The desmo valve train-the first on a production Ducati V-twin-along with the 40mm Dell'Orto carbs, triple disc brakes, clip-on handlebars and rearsets with remote linkages remained. Many Super Sports, like this example originally sold in South Africa, were pressed into racing duty, then later returned to street use.
Smart expertly kick-starts the SS, pulls the right-side shifter up for first and enters the track. The motorcycle is obscenely loud, even by early-'70s standards, and the combined thrashing of the gear-driven cams, the intense intake chuffing and the bark of the straight-through Conti mufflers is definitely plug-your-ears painful at close range. No wonder Maggie Smart, Paul's wife and the sister of the late, great Barry Sheene, had reminded him to wear his earplugs. Smart laps, well, smartly, on the Super Sport, but not quite at the same pace as on the racer. It's the brakes mostly. Italian Scarab front calipers-cheap knockoffs of the factory racer's Lockheeds-became standard equipment on production Super Sports and never offered the same performance or feel as the originals. Besides that, the Super Sport doesn't have the Imola-spec camshafts, bold cylinder-head development, straight-cut primary gears, efficient racing fairing or light weight of the factory bikes. Even so, its DNA remains intact.