KIWI RIDER 12 2019 VOL1 | Page 18

DUCATI GOES IN BIG ON MULTISTRADA RELIABILITY W hen it comes to selling a bike designed for touring, reliability is a big factor in whether your brand gets any attention, especially if you are one of the biggest names in the business. Ducati may have the stigma in the eyes of some of being an Italian manufacturer with the associated jokes on reliability hanging over its head, but the company is clearly backing its products to be as reliable as they can be with the announcement that the entire Multistrada family will now all be backed by a four-year warranty. Called 4Ever Multistrada, the four-year warranty offers unlimited mileage for all of the models in the 2020 Multistrada range, including all the 950 and 1260 Multistrada models of the range, as well as the recently announced 1260S Multistrada Grand Tour. 18 KIWI RIDER Ducati says it is now able to offer such an extensive warranty for the Multistrada (no word yet on whether this warranty will be extended to other models in the Ducati range) thanks to product testing which is ever more severe and long-lasting, improved production processes and advanced numerical simulation which has contributed to bring the reliability of the bikes from Borgio Panigale to its highest ever level. With words like these, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Ducati offer other extended warranties in the future also. How long it will take for Ducati to shed its “Italian reliability” stigma from decades past is still to be seen, however.