May - Bike Talk

REVIEW: ‘12 Duca Diavel
The Diavel is Duca’s biggest challenge ever, much bigger
than last year’s ground-breaking adventure bike, the
Mulstrada 1200 S. With the Diavel, Duca is treading on
virgin turf, having created a new type of motorcycle and a
new way to enjoy riding. The ingredients are all there: the
look, riding posture, performance potenal and sound.
The Diavel shares the Mulstrada’s basic frame structure
and four-valve, 90-degree 1200cc V-Twin in Testastrea
11-degree configuraon; so called for the degrees of
camsha overlap. More importantly, it shares the same
creaveness and pursuit of quality and efficiency that
were not part of Duca’s product policy unl five years
ago.
From any perspecve, the Diavel is an impressive
motorcycle. Its profile is unique, as it is its mission.
Styling is enormously muscular; forward concentraon
of masses, lean rear secon and fat rear tyre. It looks
like a line-backer ready to jump into acon, the pads
protecng his shoulders and back so thickly that the
helmet disappears into his body. The headlight is almost
flush with the massive 50mm Marzocchi fork and the
protruding air intakes. The masses concentrated behind
the front wheel form a complex, almost gothic image of
clean, rounded surfaces, either in polished metal or dull
black on which the vivid red of the steel trellis frame
draws its elegant triangulaons. No queson, the Duca
styling department was given lots of freedom on this
project, and the result is fascinang.
Duca conceived the Diavel as a superbike with a powercruiser
soul but granted it all the best to perform like a
superbike, including radial-mount Brembo Monobloc
front brake callipers that ensure some of the strongest
deceleraons in the industry. Just as the Diavel projects
an aggressive, powerful image, and indeed, it indeed is
very powerful. Duca extracted a lot more than they
gave the Mulstrada: 162bhp @ 9,500 rpm and 127.5Nm
@ 8,000 rpm. The gains come from the curvaceous and
rather intricate exhaust system (engineers resorted to
18
hydroforming to correctly shape the 2-into-1 manifold)
and superior efficiency of the Diavel’s dynamic air
intakes.
LEDs are used front and rear, and the turn-signals double
as parking and stoplights. The rider sits behind the pivot
of the massive single-sided swing-arm, but the passenger
sits in front of the rear axle. I discovered, the bike is very
pleasant to ride, even very fast on a twisty back-road.
And performance potenal is something the Diavel
is not short of. For this test in Durban, I was entrusted
with a red/black Diavel. Despite its inmidang look,
the bike welcomed me aboard with its light weight, wellconfigured
handlebar and low seat. The foot-pegs are set
appropriately low in due relaon to the seat, providing a
very comfortable “tall-in-the-saddle” riding posture. The
pegs limit lean angle to 41 degrees, but that proved to be
more than adequate even for serious riding.
At cold start, the engine stabilizes quickly to a 1000-rpm
idle, eming the typical Duca sound, but on a slightly
louder and raspy tone. The engine does not emit typical
mechanical noise thanks to the inseron of a sounddeadening
barrier inside the crankcase cover on the
primary transmission side. This is big progress and should
be applied to the whole model line.
The Diavel’s profile is unique, as it is its mission. Styling is
enormously muscular—forward concentraon of masses,
lean rear secon and fat rear tyre.
The engine is incredibly strong, acceleraon is terrific and
the 160km/h mark is ridiculously easy to reach. I did it on
the highway, and it was an exhilarang experience, using
all 10,000 rpm the engine generously puts at disposal of
the strong of heart. I must say that the wind pressure at
that speed is more than acceptable, making 140km/h
cruising a walk in the park. The ride-by-wire throle offers
a selecon of three actuaon modes: Urban, Touring
and Sport. Tracon control, selectable over eight levels
of acon, is also standard and will be called into play on
cold, slippery roads, making the three throle modes
somewhat redundant.
Negoang some steep, ght hairpins on a twisty road
from Richmond, the Diavel’s relave lack of flywheel mass,
forced me to feather the clutch because the response was
shuddery. The Diavel showed that the concept for the
project has been very well-executed. The bike is terribly
fast and aggressive, and the well-sorted riding posion
induces the rider to probe limits normally idenfied with
pure sportbikes.
As the bike was delivered to me, the rear suspension was
too prone to squat under hard acceleraon, inducing a
clear tendency to run wide exing corners full blast.
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