Ducati and Lamborghini Team Up to Create Diavel 1260 Motorcycle

Cre­at­ed as the first col­lab­o­ra­tion between two Ital­ian brands, the Ducati Diav­el 1260 Lam­borgh­i­ni pays homage to the Sian FKP 37 hybrid super­car.

In 2012, Volk­swa­gen bought Ducati, adding anoth­er Ital­ian icon to its impres­sive port­fo­lio, which already includ­ed Lam­borgh­i­ni and Bugat­ti, as well as Porsche, Bent­ley and Audi.

The head­quar­ters of the com­pa­nies are locat­ed about 20 kilo­me­ters apart on a short stretch between Bologna and Fer­rar­i’s home­town, Mod­e­na, which is the heart of the Ital­ian motor val­ley. It seems sur­pris­ing that Ducati and Lam­borgh­i­ni have nev­er worked togeth­er on a com­mon project before. At the same time, iron­i­cal­ly, the own­er of Ducati on paper is Auto­mo­bili Lam­borgh­i­ni SpA.

The inspi­ra­tion for this build was the 800 hp (597 kW) Sian FKP 37, Lam­borgh­ini’s first ever hybrid car, which was unveiled in 2019 in hon­or of the late Fer­di­nand Piech, who passed away a few months ear­li­er as chair­man of the VW Group. Only 63, emblem­at­ic of the com­pa­ny’s found­ing year (1963), were built, and they quick­ly sold out for US$2 mil­lion apiece, as did the 19 Sian open-top road­sters that were made a year lat­er.

The Diav­el was the obvi­ous choice and Ducati built it around a more pow­er­ful ver­sion of the 1260 S with a 162 hp engine. (121 kW), Ohlins adjustable sus­pen­sion and ful­ly elec­tron­ic unit. With­out chang­ing the mechan­i­cal set­up of the stan­dard Diav­el, the design­ers of both brands col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate a visu­al con­nec­tion between motor­cy­cle and car, start­ing with two cen­tral ele­ments: wheels and col­ors.

Cen­tro Stile Lam­borgh­i­ni has made sure this Diav­el has the same “Gea Green” col­or as the Sian, with the addi­tion of “Elec­trum Gold” hues on the rims and trel­lis frame.

Ducati replaced almost every­thing in the stan­dard body­work with car­bon fiber parts, includ­ing air intakes, cen­ter tank cap, mud­guards, exhaust cap, seat, head­light frame and engine spoil­er. This explains why the Lam­borgh­i­ni ver­sion weighs one kilo less than the Diav­el 1260S.

Diav­el 1260 Lam­borgh­i­ni will be pro­duced in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of only 630 motor­cy­cles. That’s 10 times more than the Sian FKP 37 cars were pro­duced. The bike def­i­nite­ly won’t car­ry the sev­en-fig­ure hyper­car price, but will require a sub­stan­tial pre­mi­um due to its col­lectible nature, unique parts like Lam­borgh­i­ni-style wheels, and an abun­dance of cus­tom-made car­bon parts.

If you want a more unusu­al vehi­cle, then read how the uni­cy­cle works in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.

Ducati does not men­tion deliv­ery times and sug­gests that inter­est­ed par­ties con­tact their local deal­ers for more infor­ma­tion. In any case, the expe­ri­ence of the pre­vi­ous fac­to­ry habits of Ital­ian man­u­fac­tur­ers — not only Ducati, but also April­ia and MV Agus­ta — tells us that the mod­els sell out pret­ty quick­ly, regard­less of the price tags.