Superbike Planet has posted a remarkably in-depth and detailed interview with Ducati North America CEO Michael Lock. The piece highlights numerous topics in the US market and as always M. Lock’s answers are filled with cut to the chase honesty… It’s sorta like a State of the Union but for Ducatista… If you’ve got the time, read it…

Q I suggested to a product guy I know that I thought Ducati needs a base motorcycle, a cheaper motorcycle, something that probably doesn’t share many parts with what you’ve got now. What do you think of that?

A I think that that–it’s not about the practicalities in our place, it’s about the philosophy. So philosophically, giving up desmodromic valve actuation; philosophically, giving up trellis frames, or some of the other very expensive to manufacture things, is an internal battle. If one side or other wins that battle, I think it opens up possibilities. Either way. But at the moment, we’re in the self-analysis stage. So you’ll see more and more bikes, for example, in the range with wet clutches. That was verboten for a long time to even suggest it. Unless, of course, you look in the history and you realize that wet clutches preceded dry clutches anyway. But they’re giving ground on some of these things, where they’re prepared to listen now to what people really want from us. And it’s interesting, if you speak to the public - not the people who are buying the bikes, but the people who aren’t buying them - if you speak to them, there are some things that they hold very dear, and some things they don’t. And we discovered that a dry clutch? Absolutely essential to a guy that wants to buy a 1098R. Absolutely essential. Guy who buys a Monster 695 has no idea whether it’s a wet or dry clutch. What he wants is a Ducati. He wants accessibility to it. So I think the idea of making something that gets people into the family, if it has to sacrifice some of these Holy Grails, it’s a valid argument. My job is to bring Ducati to people in America. It’s to bring the bike. Not to have a ring fence there with everybody standing outside looking in. My job is to bring it to the people. So yeah, there are some battles still to fight internally on that, but they’re philosophical rather than practical.

Read more here…. (Shameless self-promotional plug: Want to hear more from Michael Lock? Check out Ducati: A Story of Passion DVD which is now available at ProItalia.com )