One Cylinder; Many Possibilities
Neil Spalding looks at the possible future of the Buell Single and the reintroduced SuperMono Ducati. Is Dan Gurney next?

So, Harley-Davidson is returning to its roots with a shiny new single-cylinder street bike. Given the number of "single-cylinder sales flops" that have occurred over the past 15 years, this at first seems like a very brave decision. With the change in century, however, the world's penchant for road-going singles may also be changing.

Modern-day single-cylinder bikes range from the ubiquitous Honda 50 up to
the high-zoot counterbalanced road and trail scoots from the major Japanese
manufacturers. In between, there is a raft of bikes ranging from the older,
heavier dual-purpose bikes to the latest, greatest lightweight four-stroke
motocrossers.

Although the single-cylinder motorcycle can trace it roots back to the very
earliest days of motorcycling, it has been overshadowed in recent years as
the attempts to civilize one giant piston slamming up and down have added
weight and complexity. The newer generation of lightweight four-cylinders
really show how overweight the once "light and agile" road-going four-stroke single has become. Yamaha's offering in this regard is a good example. An XTZ660 road-going trailie weighs in at 376 pounds (claimed dry weight, mind you!) whereas a new YZF-R6 four-stroke four-cylinder is a claimed 370 pounds (never mind the power difference). At the opposite end of the scale, however, but still primarily dirt-bike-oriented, are the newer lightweight singles like the competition-oriented WR400 (based on the even lighter 229-pound, but not road-legal, YZ400F four-stroke motocrosser) which weighs in at only 251 pounds.

Harley-Davidson's mission, though, is not to get involved in the "lighter-is-better" wars. H-D, after all, is the king of moto-marketing,
from leather jackets to after shave.  Motorcycling these days is all about
Image, and riders these days buy into that Image, whether it's "race bike
replica", "tourer", or "boulevard cruiser".  The bikes are part of the experience, and Harley's current range is hardly beginner-friendly right now. In recent years, it has become the norm for Harley rider wannabe's to learn on 500cc bikes, or sometimes 883cc Sportsters, but it was not so long ago that a typical learner bike was under 250cc.

Think how many more people could be attracted to the sport, and the
lifestyle, of motorcycling if the first steps were a little more gentle and
allowed immediate brand buy-in. Harley's new single is all about providing
an easy platform for beginners to learn with and immediately buy into the
H-D brand culture, It's an idea that has worked for BMW with their hot-selling F650.

Brand culture limits some manufacturers to their "signature" style of bikes. This phenomenon is why it is unlikely that you will ever see a Supersport 600 from Harley and don't hold your breath waiting for a transverse-mounted in-line four-cylinder from Ducati. What we are seeing, rather, is extensions of brands. BMW and Harley are, in fact, not selling singles. They are selling re-engineered versions of their twins with one cylinder missing.

Ducati applied this very same engineering, literally, with their Supermono,
a racebike that was produced in a limited run of 67 units between 1993 and
1995. The bike was literally an 888cc L-Twin with one bored-and-stroked
cylinder that yielded 572cc. Both con-rods were still present, but the
"vertical" cylinder and head were lopped off and replaced by a pivoting
counter-balancer weight. These exclusive racers produced up to 76 horsepower at a howling 10,000 rpm. With heavy sand-cast crankcases, they weighed in at just 275 pounds. The Supermono, made street-legal, could very easily give Ducati its own version of a real starter bike. After all, the
racer had a 29-inch seat height, and with no rear cylinder to force the
frame up, the street bike could be made even lower.

No less a source than Ducati boss Massimo Bordi was quoted in the British
monthly, Performance Bikes, as late as this past November saying that the
Supermono street bike would be released soon. In a world of single-cylinder
sales flops, it was going to take real cajones to produce an entirely new
model family, but the right formula has now been established. All Ducati
has to do now is push open the door.

If the AMA keeps its present rules, maybe we can even look forward to a
works Ducati Supermono or two rolling into place on the AMA 250GP grid. My
team made 76 horsepower two years ago with a modified 1995 engine. If a
Ducati Supermono was released later this year utilizing Y2K 996 technology
that produced 90 horsepower at around 10,000 rpm, maybe we would even see a single sitting on top of the podium...

Footnote:
Neil Spalding runs Sigma Performance, a Ducati-based racing and tuning business in the UK. For three years, he competed in the European Supermono Cup, a single-cylinder support race that ran in conjunction with the European rounds of the World Superbike Championship. In 1998, Canadian Jon Cornwell won the Daytona Supermono race on a Sigma Performance Ducati Supermono. The Sigma Performance website contains the full story. Go to http://www.sigmaperformance.com