Made in Italy NCRs

This drop-dead beauty was sitting in pride of place when I dropped by Made in Italy Motorcycles and no wonder - John and Neil built it. Not cheap at £18k, but you could chop £2k off that by going without the dry clutch, and then it starts to look like something very special at close to Multistrada money. And we all know what will be worth more in a couple of years...
The bike's (of course) a replica of the NCR F1 racer, as raced by Hailwood in 1978. The F1's were really built for endurance racing (with some success), and way back then NCR were effectively Ducati Corse, and based in the Ducati factory: unbelievable now, but back in the late seventies and almost up until the Cagiva takeover, nobody at Ducati saw the value of racing, so were happy to let NCR do the racing and bask in any reflected glory. NCR also built Tony Rutter's TT winners, as featured in Benzina #2.

NCR was born in 1967 in Borgo Panigale, almost next door to the Ducati factory on the outskirts of Bologna. Giorgio Nepoti, Rino Caracchi and Rizzi, the three founders, gave their surnames' initials to created a state-of the-art race shop tweaking and racing Ducatis. When Rizzi left the R came to stand for racing, and although the business still tunes and races Ducati. Giorgio died along with his wife in a car crash in 2006, but Rino's still very much building bikes - including a perfect 125 Ducati for the Motogiro