Ducati 750 Paso - Between the Hedges

The Honda 600 Revere was traded in on 16th March 1990 against this Ducati 750 Paso. Having owned a long string of shaft driven "tourers" this represented something of a rebellion.

Launched into a marketplace flooded with Japanese race-replicas, this bike really stood apart. It was light, bright and notably quick. It also sported a simple engine as opposed to techno trappings such as injection and engine management computers etc., which was then quickly becoming the norm. Apart from the way it looked and performed - it actually sounded like a motorcycle should. The Paso would generate a healthy traditional deep-throated "twinny" snort in response to a slight blip of the throttle. On the move it sounded mean and gutsy. You certainly knew you were sitting on top of a power unit!

The name Ducati has for generations been synonymous with performance and solid handling. The Paso displayed everything that spelt out the purity of the breed. It was a superb handler and certainly had more power than I ever used. I never once rode it with a fully opened throttle. In the main I enjoyed this bike immensely. It had qualities that I had long searched for but because I'd ridden mostly 'sensible' bikes, hadn't previously discovered. It delivered large packets of fun, in ingredient which can easily be overlooked in the serious pursuit of excellence. It should be fun too yes?

The Paso, like most other Ducatis over many years proved that the story of a good road bike has many chapters and not just the one about power output... this was still a time when Japanese superbikes were being furiously reincarnated, each more monstrous and muscular than before, in the rather pointless battle for dyno output and standing quarters. Bike magazines were largely obsessed with top speeds, wheelies and scorching rubber (sadly some still are!). The Paso mightn't have scored very highly in terms of sheer BHP but it delivered the goods on the road where it actually mattered and there were a number of occasions when much bigger fish couldn't catch it or match it. It went about the business with swiftness and agility and not brute force.

This was a time when Ducati was making a major comeback both on the race track and in the showrooms. The big 'Dukes' proved beyond question that it was possible even in the 'nineties for twins not only to be competitive on the track but to win hands down against multi-cylinder opponents from any stable. I went to Donnington on my Paso in 1990 and watched the Ducatis snort their way to victory to applauding crowds and there was something rather glorious about hearing the staccato bark of a Vee-Twin on song as opposed to the tortured wail of the big fours. Clearly Ducati played the right note with this well timed comeback as within a couple of years Suzuki, Yamaha and Honda all appeared with Ducati clones and lookalikes in their showroom line-up. I'm glad to be able to say I owned a real one!

In true thoroughbred style, the Paso was not without its faults. (Or is that character?) Two maladies plagued it and seriously detracted from the overall pleasure of owning it. The first was the electrics. Apparently this has always been a bugbear of Italian motorcycles. When it rained weird things happened. The front sparking plug was directly in line with the tyre and so all of the water thrown backwards was sprayed directly on to it. This regularly caused misfiring and difficult re-starting. Not far from this point on the engine was the sender for the oil pressure warning lamp which would come on in the rain. The first time this happened was when the bike was only a few weeks old and I thought that the oil pump had failed. After a worried dealer stripped the engine it was discovered that the fault was in fact a simple case of electrical shorting and their answer was to cover the sender unit and cable in Blue-Tack! (Perhaps a neat roadside 'fix' but hardly a solution).

The other problem the bike had was that of carburation. At speed it was perfect but in traffic queues it was simply dreadful. It was near impossible to ride the bike slowly and smoothly. At low speeds it would grunt and snatch and stall. Pretty embarrassing really. I'm reliably informed by experts that the dual barrel Weber carb it originally shipped with was later replaced by a Japanese Mikuni unit. I read in a bike magazine some time afterwards that Mikuni carbs were part of the original Paso specification but some sort of bureaucracy prevented it from having them in the first place. Is this the case? If anyone knows please do email me. I'd ike to know.

Although I really liked this bike as a weekend toy I also needed a bike to go to work on - it was my only means of transport - and this was the wrong bike for that. The dream was over and I woke up - so I eventually decided to climb down from exotica and go back to a Honda.