It was a typical January New York City scene. A queue of people, high heeled women and men in cashmere coats stood behind a velvet rope, impatiently stamping their feet to stay warm. Big guys holding clipboards checked names, unhooking the rope for some, shaking their heads at others. In the front window, a DJ spun records, ear slapped down on his shoulder as the beats got louder and faster. Nothing new - this is Soho, 365 days a year.

The morning after the party, Soup spoke to Ducati North America's CEO Michael Lock about this brand evolution, about the 2009 Streetfighter, what it means to the Monster line.

Q What struck me last night about the party is, in the early '90s through '98-'99, if you went to a Ducati event, it was mustachioed gentlemen wearing tweed caps and bow ties eating sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And talking about their bevels and Pantahs.

A [Laughing] I know what you're talking about.

Q And I was one of those guys! When you look at Ducati's transformation from almost the ashes prior to TPG taking over, to where the company is now, there are guys who get credit for it, who you can look at. There are guys we know in racing, Tardozzi and Suppo and Domenicali, all these guys you can look at for the racing. And some of the designers, Galluzzi and Terblanche, guys that you can say "these guys designed these bikes." But the thing that struck me a lot in terms of the transformation of Ducati, and putting an identity on an important part of what's changed, is this whole transformation from those mustachioed, tweed-cap-wearing guys, to where Ducati is a cool thing, where it isn't that enthusiast customer. So I'm curious who was the person, and what was the movement and the moment within Ducati, that said, "This is what we need to do to get outside of that, so we can grow our market share."

A That's a good question.

Q That person needs to be in the Ducati Hall of Fame.

A I'm not sure that there is a person. There are people who had visions of what we wanted to become, but in engineering, you can have a genius. You can have one guy, and everyone else supports him, and it's like a tidal wave. But I think in repositioning a company in the kind of communications and the kind of outreach you have to people, I don't know that you could say there's a person. I think there are - there's a senior management team. And Ducati was always very Italian. Very Italian. And it's now not. It's now in Bologna, and it surrounds itself with all of that culture, but there are lots of us who are not Italian. And I think the non-Italian view of who we should be is as valid as the Italian view. I'm a Brit living in the US working for Ducati. It's an international company. But what I want to do, is I want to create an environment where, what Americans dream that Ducati should be, we deliver. And I think that sometimes, an international perspective on that, it works, because the Italians are very close to it. They're so close to it they can't see it. And the ones of us who are not, who are in these far-flung corners of the world, have to interpret the factory, and have to edit the factory, to a package that works here. Let me give you an example. The Streetfighter is a bike that we lobbied for very, very hard, for a couple of reasons. Thousands of people want to buy Ducati Superbikes. It's a real aspiration. It's a beautiful pinnacle of achievement. But not a lot of people can actually ride them. And certainly, very few people can ride them to anything like their potential. So there's this kind of gap, and we wanted a bike that could bridge the gap. That bike was a bike lobbied for by the heads of the subsidiaries outside of Italy. Because that, for us, was a modern interpretation of what Ducati and Italian engineering and modern technology and style and design should be. So I think that, to answer your question, I'm not sure that I could give you a name of one person. I could give you a dozen names of people I think, "Oh, yeah, he was significant in doing that." David Gross, who worked for Ducati until quite recently, an American from New York, worked in the factory, and was the architect of the Ducati People campaign, which put the machinery and the factory together with the people who loved it. That was clever. Because it made us real, not just a kind of art gallery boutique brand. It made us a real company that people could look at that advertising and that publicity, and say, "That could be me. Actually that guy looks a bit like me."

Q And it was definitely youthful, attractive people.

A Yep. But they were real people. They picked people from the factory, or customers, that actually participate in the brand. So we made it more accessible, and more legitimate. So David was responsible for that. So I think he takes great credit. Claudio, coming over from Corse to the street bike side, brought a winning mentality to developing new bikes. Claudio's about winning. He's an engineer, and his brief at Corse was to win as many races and World Championships as he could, and beat companies who had ten times his budget. So he's come over to the street bike side, and said, "I need winning street bikes. Not just ones that we can look back at 20 years later and say, 'Wasn't that clever.' Ones that actually win. Sell. Make money for dealers. Make money for Ducati." So bikes like the 696 Monster, a very good example of that. It's a complete reinterpretation of the essence of the Monster, but in a package that anyone could ride.

Q Obviously you guys had the S4RS, and when this bike came out, I think a lot of people were curious whether you were going to put a liquid-cooled power plant in the Monster line. Does the Streetfighter mean that the Monster line is going to be an air-cooled line, for the most part?

A I think what the Streetfighter does, is it frees up the Monster to be a better Monster. And what I mean by that is, if you go back a year or two, we had, at one bookend we had the Monster 620, which was a chassis that was built for a 1000cc bike with a 620 motor in it, based on the 851 chassis from 15 years ago. So limited steering lock, heavier than it should have been, less power than really was suitable for the chassis, stiff clutch. It wasn't an entry bike to the Ducati line, but it was stretching the Monster brand, because that concept had to go all the way up to 150 horsepower Testastretta engine. And it's too much of a compromise. The bikes that were best were the ones in the middle. So when we planned the new generation, we said, "Do we want a high-performance naked bike that celebrates everything we know? Yes. Should it be an extension of a Monster 1000 or 620? No. Okay. So, should the naked performance bike be derived from a Superbike? Yes." So the Streetfighter is halfway between the Superbike and the Monster, but it frees up the Monster to be a different bike. You look at the chassis between the Streetfighter and the Monster, they're completely different. Geometry different, weight distribution is different, ergonomics are different, everything's different.

Q Rear suspension linkage versus cantilevered...

A Absolutely. Because the engineering in the 696 is appropriate for that bike. It's a much better entry bike to the brand than we've ever had. But the Streetfighter is a much better premium, high-performance naked bike than we ever had. So separating out the families and doing them better makes sense.

Q My impression when I saw the Streetfighter was that you guys got tired of reading magazine articles where the Aprilia Tuono beat the S4RS.

A [Laughing]

Q And you said, "Okay, we're going to put Aprilia back in their place."

A Well, I couldn't really comment on that, but I can tell you one thing we did get sick and tired of reading in the press, was, journalists, and customers, and us, all being ultimately frustrated that when manufacturers take a Superbike and rip the fairing off, they kind of dumb it down. I'm an enthusiast. I'm sick and tired of that. So the brief on this was "no dumbing down. This is full horsepower, all beef." And it really is a Superbike in street guise. And I think we made a breakthrough with that. It's got class-leading horsepower. The next one down the food chain is also Italian and produces a lot of horsepower, but it weighs about 50 pounds more. You want a naked Superbike with flat bars, you want it to be as light as possible. You want it to be flickable, that's what we all dream of, right? Horsepower, but no "urrrrgh, urrrrgh." And so the brief with this was class-leading horsepower, class-leading torque, lowest weight in class. Make the best bike possible, and we'll see if it is, but I'm pretty confident it will be.

Q I'm hoping that we'll get an interview with (Streetfighter Designer) Damien Basset so that we can get his thoughts on it, as well, once we get a little bit closer to it.

A Damien's an interesting guy. Really interesting guy. Because if you scratch the surface with him, you know what his real love is? Nasty custom bikes. He loves them. And he doodles them all day long. The high-performance custom bike, if Ducati would do it. That's what he dreams of all the time. So when he was given this project, he brought quite an interesting perspective to it. That it had to be comfortable. It had to wear all of its engineering on the outside. He's very Heath Robinson in his outlook. Very detail and stuff that can be beautiful. And when you see the accessories line for this as well, people can build this bike lots of different ways. So yes, Damien's an interesting guy.