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iM Highlight: The Mighty Duc

My buddy Mike has been in this car game for years. When I met him about 10+ years ago, he was rolling hard in a green 4 door Integra, one of the cleanest in the city. He’s the guy that turned me on to this whole ‘JDM’ cleanliness game.

Fast forward to a few years later. Integra is sold, he goes through a few cars, but never really sticks to them. Now he’s back into a Honda, an all black S2000 that I took a few random snaps of a few months ago. His focus though, has been turned back onto bikes. Everything that I know about bikes (which isn’t much, but its better than nothing) was learned from him. He’s got a few of them on the go right now, including a Ducati 749, and a Honda RC51 SP2 that both see active track duty.

But recently he added one rare beast to his stable, which I saw with my own eyes for the first time on the weekend. He invited me down to the shop where his bikes are stored to come take a look and hang out.

And there she was, the lady in red, staring down the other bikes.

The new addition to the family was a 2005 Ducati 999R. Very limited in its production, was created and sold to the public as a homologation limited edition model to be able to compete in the AMA Superbike series. Although Ducati never released production numbers, its believed that only 500 of these were made in 2005 with less than that going on sale to the general public.

At first glance, it looks just like the yellow 749 sitting near it. But as I looked closer, the differences became obvious. Carbon fibre everywhere. Fairings, fenders, other miscellaneous pieces, all perfectly weaved. If you look closely at the fairing, you’ll notice the ‘Ducati 999R’ emblem isn’t paint or a decal. They are just gaps in the paint to show you whats underneath. Other things such as the Brembo mono block brake calipers and Ohlins suspension with reservoir were quite obvious, but a few others were pointed out to me such as the fact that the wheels were forged, and the front headlight surround setup and valve covers are magnesium to minimize weight.

Here are a few shots of Mike’s other bikes:

Too bad the weather is not suitable at all for bikes, because I’d love to have shot these outside rolling instead of being stuck in a shop. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that when the weather gets nicer, but these will have to do for now. Hope you enjoyed, and the summer needs to get here QUICK!