1702 DT final

FIRST RIDE
DIRTY SLED
The more dirt-oriented Scrambler Desert Sled.
“When you say this is the only bike you
have, does that mean the only bike you
have here or the only bike you have…
period?” I ask.
“The only bike, as in it’s the only one
like it that exists in the world right now,
and it’s got to be in one piece for all the
marketing assets we need to shoot,”
confirms Ducati North America Public
Relations Manager Nathon Verdugo.
My question is perhaps rhetorical; I
can already see the sweat pooling up
in his palms. But I ask anyway because
Ducati’s video team is proposing that
Words: Bradley Adams (Cycle World)
its video model, Drake McElroy, jump
the bike off of a berm, toward a down
slope 5-plus feet away, and straight into
a rather menacing sand wash. As far as
I’m concerned, that’s not something you
do with a bike that needs to stay in one
piece. And up until now, it’s definitely not
something you do with a bike wearing
Scrambler badges on its tank.
…We have a bigger fork. We changed
the swingarm. The spring. And it’s
good for real off-road.”
Either I was about to watch grown men
break out in tears or see the evolution
of the Scrambler unfold in front of my
very own eyes. Three, two… Wait, first a
closer look at Ducati’s all-new Scrambler
Desert Sled.
“We like to call this kind of bike
the second new Scrambler,” Ducati
Scrambler Brand Director Claudio de
Angeli says as we stand on the barren
El Mirage lake bed for a private shoot of
the Desert Sled, two months ahead of
its official unveil. “It’s the second new
bike because this kind of bike has almost
nothing to do with the other one. We have
a bigger fork. We changed the swingarm.
DIRT & TRAIL MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2017 7 1