Older, Wiser, and Less Rebellious

I recently celebrated one of those birthdays we generally look forward to with equal measures excitement and dread.  It went well.  I share this only to say I’m well acquainted with the moderating and modulating effects of age.  There are goods; there are bads.   There are joys and wonders; there are bummers and drags.  There is expansion; there is contraction.  But in the end, just being able to keep plugging along is really its own reward.

Automobiles have their own generational life-cycles.  And recently I had the opportunity to compare a young-whippersnapper version of a car I’d had a generation before, the older version of which I still hold as one of the most engaging and pleasing vehicles in my personal ownership canon.  That older car was a 2007 Mini Cooper S, painted in vibrant Laser Blue Metallic with white roof and stripes, and shod in white OZ WRC replica wheels.  It was a gas.  And the newer, younger version?  A 2016 Mini Cooper S John Cooper Works Edition.  So can you ever go home again?

(Thanks to Baron Mini in Merriam, Kansas, for the extended test drive.)

When BMW acquired Mini (as part of the Rover acquisition in 1994) and rolled out the new Cooper, it jump started a revolution in small, fun-to-drive, “premium” cars.  And in 2006 when Dreamy Wife announced she wanted to live with a Mini for a while, we gleefully spec’ed out her car for maximum attraction and enjoyment.  That car had the most immediate and responsive steering of pretty much anything I’ve driven before or since, and while many of the ergonomics were on the cute side of annoying (but still annoying), the car never failed to delight.  We still look back on our ownership experience fondly.

(I learned several things about my wife during our ownership of that car:  That she could naturally heal-and-toe on downshifts; that she was no one’s patsy when it came to blasting through traffic; that she firmly believed winning meant getting to the red-light first.  I distinctly remember following her home from an event one evening and having to use all of the juice in my V8 Audi S4 Avant to just keep up.  I’d never been more proud.)

It’s with that background that I slipped behind the wheel of the new Mini and pushed the start button.  Or rather, flicked the start toggle, it’s clear edges glowing with angry red LED lighting like a cockpit switch in an imaginary fighter airplane.  It’s a fun touch of small drama and childlike amusement.

A friend of mine, a graphic designer whose opinion I value and who has owned two modern Minis, finds the styling of contemporary Minis a tad overwrought.  While it’s hard to fault his commitment to the intrinsic goodness of Frank Stephenson’s original Mini 2.0 design, I find the evolutionary changes to the Cooper S, with its slightly lower, wider, more athletic stance, to be altogether proportional and muscular.  It’s a bulldog in a track suit.  This example was painted in Thunder Grey, with matte-black stripes (and red pin striping) and black 17” JCW “Track Spoke” wheels completing the look.  Tough, purposeful, ready to go; it practically shouts “start me up” and has just the right amount of boy-racer.

My first observation when I settled into the driver’s seat was how refined the interior had become.  Gone were many of the annoying quirks of the earlier car, along with the questionable interior materials and finish quality, replaced with what might be described as "BMW-esque" levels of finish and quality, the first of many such parental influences I’d find.  Materials were upgraded across the board, controls were generally where you’d expect them (not the case on the earlier car), and acoustic isolation when the car was running was top-notch.  It wouldn’t be a Mini without some ergonomic quirks, though, and the JCW exhibited one such with the parking brake that, when pulled, interfered with the arm rest.  (Car designers do nothing by accident so I smiled at the thought of all the design review meetings that must have led to this choice of purposefully designed annoyance.)

Push the button; make a lot of silly noise.  Wonderful fun.

I also noticed the little stubby lipstick-sized dongle hanging from a hook on the lower dash.  This turned out to be a Bluetooth-enabled triggering mechanism for the baffle in the JCW performance exhaust.  When pushed, the bottom on the end of the “trigger” glowed red (to match the ignition switch), but most importantly it turned the normally pedestrian exhaust into a pissed-off and petulant child, roaring on acceleration, crackling with abandon on downshifts, generally making itself known in all situations and encouraging me to goose it whenever I was in a parking structure or other enclosed space (including my own garage; sorry, sweetie).  The cute little exhaust boomlet igniter was entertaining and totally amusing.  For the first few times at least.  Then it became annoying and I just forgot about it.  The Sport mode setting with its mellow growl was enough.

On the road, the JCW immediately confirmed what I’d hoped:  That it still torque-steers like a little wonder demon, with all the playful steering-wheel rowing the accompanies attempting largely unsuccessfully to quell the physics of front-to-rear weight transfer in more powerful front-wheel drive cars.  (This seems a trait of the species, and I consider all those FWD-biased all-wheel-drive cars equipped with Haldex differentials cheating.  I’m talking to you, Audi TT.) This is a juvenile preference, obviously, as it’s actually pretty disconcerting behavior, and at the limit only exacerbates oversteer at almost always the wrong times.  But hey, it fun to feel like you’re surfing nose-up on asphalt waves; sue me.

While Minis have always seemed faster than they actually are, the JCW provides the same visceral thrill with the added benefit of actually being quite speedy.  It’s 2-liter, 228hp 4-cylinder BMW engine provides plenty of motivation, hitting the 0-60 mark in 6.1 seconds, with 236lb/ft of torque doing its best to wrench the steering wheel from your hands at all times under acceleration.

The Power and Torque meter makes a game out of every stoplight to stoplight run.

My joy at the reminder of power-on torque steer was quickly tempered by the feeling that the steering wheel seemed attached to the front wheels by a worn rubber band.  The culprit:  The steering rack, which only vaguely approximated the immediate, telepathic go-kart handling baked in to the earlier generation car.  This was my biggest disappointment with the newer car, especially when the electronics were set in “Mid” mode, where I found the disconnect in steering feel utterly odd.  In “Sport” mode the steering feel firms up nicely, at least in comparison, but the default setting always feels like the car is struggling to keep up with steering inputs.  In certain moments the oscillation was almost disconcerting.  Weird.

The JCW’s 6-speed Getrag transmission was a more welcome participant in the driving engagement equation.  The clutch take-up was a tad high but predictable, and not at all grabby.  And the shifter, while a bit rubbery on my earlier car, schnicked gear-to-gear with precision and ease.  It was no Honda or Porsche shifter, but was comparable to the last modern BMW manual I’ve driven (a 118i I spend a couple of weeks with in Scotland).  Great stuff, and mandatory on a Mini.  Why anyone, short of the infirm, would chose an automatic in this car is beyond me.

I do have a complaint about the shifting in the JCW, though, and that’s the annoying rev-matching feature on downshifts.  Half the fun of a manual (the precious “feel and involvement” car guys spend days lecturing over) is practicing heel-and-toe rev-matching, searching for just that right ankle movement and pressure, the automotive equivalent of the elusive perfect golf shot.  The JCW does it for you, making heel-and-toeing superfluous, and I either couldn’t figure out how to disable the function or it can’t be.  Regardless, it’s a bummer and removes from the general thrill of rowing your own.  Come on, Mini, at least let us turn this “feature” off.

At the end of the day, I kept thinking about this old college pal of mine, a standout runner and swimmer who developed early and had the most amazing physique, an Adonis with fluid moves and the quiet presence common to athletes comfortable in their taut skin.  I ran into him a few years ago.  He was still as gregarious as always, a fun guy with a nice career and a happy family, but he’d changed, of course, a fair amount of paunch stretching his golf shirt, his moves still athletic but more languorous, a man with little left to prove.  His lively athletic days were past, though he was a much more fully formed personality.  An adult.  Like my buddy, the JCW Mini is pleasant and mature and a joy to spend time with.  It’s still a great car, my choice for best compact by some margin, though it seems to be trying a bit too hard to recapture some of those glory days with a few of its affectations.  It’s no longer the firecracker that was my 2007 version of itself and that’s okay.  It’s neither better nor worse.  Like most of us, it’s just grown up.

Sergio Leone meets Willie G. Davidson: The Ducati XDiavel S

The thing about cruisers is, you can see your feet.  I don’t mean you can see your feet when you make a concerted (and dangerous) effort to look downward while in motion but rather you can see your feet with a quick downward look, a furtive glance really, like you’re sizing up what’s in front of you top-to-bottom.  It’s subtle.  Folks who ride sportbikes never have this experience, what with our knees bent at a fetal angle, our feet somewhere aft of our posteriors.  The feet are superfluous to the sportbike equation, except for leverage.  (And not falling over when stopped of course.)  No, the feet to a cruiser rider are key; forward outriggers splayed into the low winds, always arriving before the rider, shifting and braking, yes, but mainly hanging out and projecting a “hang loose” vibe.

The other thing is this, until recently I’d never before seen my feet when riding a motorcycle.  I now have, thanks to the Ducati XDiavel S.

(Thanks to Reno’s Powersports, in Kansas City, MO, and Ducati North America for the recent extended test ride on the XDiavel S.  Thanks also to Allan Lane from Sportbikes Inc for his insight and participation in the event.)

There's a lot going on with the XDiavel S and all of it's good.

Ducati is certainly not well known for its historical commitment to the cruiser motorcycle market.  Prior to the introduction of the Diavel at the EICMA motorcycle show in Milan in 2010, Ducati had produced only one cruiser, the Indiana, which it made from 1986 to 1990.  (A bike manufactured by Cagiva, in fact, and not actually Ducati, though it was powered by the Ducati Pantah engine.  It’s not remembered fondly.)  Ducati’s racing machines and aggressive street naked bikes have graced several generations of little boys’ bedrooms in the form of slick posters (this little boy included), and the Bologna company continues to make some of the most lust-worthy and significant performance machines on the market today.  (And in fairness some brilliant touring and motard bikes as well.)

But the Diavel marked a departure.  It was Ducati’s first real foray into the budding “power cruiser” market best represented by the Harley Davidson V-Rod, Victory Hammer, Honda Valkyrie, and Yamaha Star VMAX (and my previous favorite, the Moto Guzzi Griso).  Designed under guidance by Pierre Terblanche, the Diavel rolled out with a slightly detuned version of the 1198cc motor from the 1198 superbike.  It’s a slightly unusual beast, a power cruiser that superbike and Monster owners could hop onto and feel reasonably comfortable given the modified seating position.  The controls and general disposition are what I’ll call “modified cruiser,” and the Diavel rides like a pumped-up standard more than a true power cruiser.  Thus it’s been a great cross-over bike for sportbike riders wanting something a bit more relaxed but also traditional cruiser riders who want something a bit more aggressive.  It’s a great middle ground and looks like nothing else.  I once asked a Ducati rep to whom the Diavel was intended to be marketed.  “Harley guys who’ve decided they actually want to turn and stop” he replied.  The sales numbers show that Ducati has found a lot of takers.

Slotting into Ducati’s lineup next to the Diavel, the XDiavel is a new machine for 2016.  It is something else entirely. As a true interpretation of a cruiser, the XDiavel hits most of the marks.  Forward controls?  Check.  Belt drive?  Check.  Silly-crazy-wide rear tire (240mm)?  Check.  Zany-long wheelbase (63.6 inches)?  Yep. It also has the requisite big honkin’ large-displacement motor, using a 1262cc version of Ducati’s Testastretta Desmodromic Variable Timing (DVT) L-Twin Dual Spark engine with all the latest electronic gizmos offered by the Italian brand.

And the XDiavel is a looker, or at least certainly looks the part of a sinister power cruiser.  All cruisers are romantic machines.  It’s impossible to think “Harley Davidson” without seeing Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper cruising the American Southwest on their way to New Orleans, or Randall “Tex” Cobb burning up the highway on his way to avenge those little Nathan Arizona tykes (though Cobb's character is actually riding a Honda rather than a Harley).  It’s that last image I had in my head when I first saw the XDiavel, one of foreboding and sinister abandon.

Engine and drivetrain detailing on the XDiavel is simply superb.

The bike is all pissed-off tarantula hawk wasp, it’s curvaceous sheet metal and sculpted billet aluminum gleaming menacingly, it’s stubby exhaust exiting bluntly in front of the massive rear tire, it’s rear wheel an intimidating turbine blade of polished alloy.  What isn’t painted black is brightly polished metal, with no blingy chrome anywhere in the vicinity.  The rider sits cantilevered out over the rear tire with no visible support, arms extended to the handlebars and feet extended to the forward controls with the disproportionate-seeming bulk of the bike’s mass in front, mechanical bits always leading the way.  The XDiavel is not Captain America’s cruiser.  It’s a dark anti-hero’s bike.  And it’s beautiful.  (The design industry seems to agree.  The XDiavel just took home a 2016 Red Dot Award for “Best of the Best”.)

I am not normally a motorcycle cruiser guy. Leisure has never been a priority for me on my rides, which is why you'll still see me swathed in leather and gear appropriate for a MotoGP race (“Dress for the crash, not for the ride”) as I contort my frame over silly-powerful sportbikes with an ever-decreasing dexterity.  I’m also not unfamiliar with Ducati bikes.  I’ve owned a number over the years and have both a 1199 Panigale R and a lovely garage-queen MH900e in my stable right now (along with an Aprilia Tuono 1100 V4 Factory I recently profiled on this blog.)  And the only motorcycle I’ve ever regretted selling was a beloved Ducati S4RS, the last of the “old school” liquid-cooled Monsters.  But with all the positives written about the Diavel, and now the XDiavel, I was immensely intrigued about how the machine would ride.

So how does it ride?  In a word:  Amazing.  In another word:  Surprising.

The knock on power cruisers, or perhaps the design brief, is that they go like hell in a straight line but just don’t try to turn or stop.  The open road is the typical playground of these bikes, long stretches of pavement gobbled up effortlessly, the horizon line stretching out forever and all that.  But for those of us who live to carve, the long lonesome is sometimes a wasted proposition.  So imagine my amazement when I first leaned into a turn on the XDiavel and it not only responded but did so almost telepathically.  Visually the balance of the bike seems all wrong, like the center of gravity would be somewhere way up front, but in practice the bike pivots under the rider as responsively as the newest Ducati Monster machines.  The front end is nicely weighted but not nervous, and the bike steers from the seat as much as from the handlebars, counter-steering effortlessly.  It’s confidence inspiring and makes the rider want to push deeper and harder into turns than seems possible on a cruiser. 

The XDiavel certainly doesn’t want for acceleration.  The bike’s power band is progressive and linear, and the electronic throttle has the same responsive feel as all modern Ducati’s, which is to say wonderful.  The torque curve is fat, with the maximum of 95-ft/lbs reached at only 5000rpm, so that the trip up to 9500rpm (with a max at 10,000) is a progressive locomotive ride.  Maximum power is 156hp.  It’s more than enough.  And it sounds the part, the classic Ducati twin rumble and burble exciting the senses, with the clutch managing a traditional “dry” rattle even though the mechanism is now bathed in fluid.  When this bike pulls up, people can’t help but stop and stare.

The Termi exhaust looks as hostile as it sounds.

The XDiavel S I rode was tricked out with an extensive list of bling from the Ducati accessories catalog and it looked the part.  From various Roland Sands-designed bits to a stubby Termignoni exhaust system with an absolutely vicious looking baffle (think cheese grater from Hell), every single nut and bolt and component on the bike was a joy to take in.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a production bike that had such universal detailing (short of a quasi-custom like a Bimota); this is a bike that rewards the visual senses to the same level it rewards the auditory, and manages the difficult balance of being both hyper-designed and not overwrought at the same time.  Well done, Ducati.

And a quick word about the XDiavel’s TFT display:  It’s a marvel, easily the best on any bike I’ve ever seen.  Bright with excellent contrast, the colors vivid in all light levels, easily configurable with left-thumb (back-lit!) controls.  Just great stuff.

(One small irritation is the presence of an electronic proximity key to start the bike up, but that’s a nit about modern vehicles in general I’ll rant about, er, write about in a future piece.)

The XDiavel is a winner on many levels:  Style, performance, uniqueness, sound, visceral thrill.  It’s a massive departure from what folks think of when they think “Ducati” and that may ultimately be the point.  As a styling exercise, this bike hits all the marks, and as a runner the XDiavel offers more than enough for even the most jaded sportbike rider or naked bike fan to appreciate and enjoy.  I will admit to being somewhat bemused about the very idea of a Ducati power cruiser, and when I first pulled away (and figured out where the damn foot controls were located), I wondered, who is this bike for?  After about thirty minutes on a variety of roads and at a variety of speeds, I thought to myself, I get this thing; I totally get this thing.  Truth be told, I liked this bike way more than I would have ever imagined.  I even got used to seeing my feet.