But if it was post 2012, it was a Volkswagen. It could not be exciting. It absolutely could not have been exciting.
Volkswagens are not exciting. Exciting is explicitly removed wherever it is found to contaminate a Volkswagen design. A Volkswagen is a boring vehicle, designed to work well for its first two owners. Volkswagen makes cars like Whirlpool makes white goods. Machines built to satisfy a requirement. And to do this without complaint, so long as any stealerships/warranty-situations might be involved.
And to satisfy that function, anything they do, they do boring. Predictable. Reliable. For the first couple of owners.
Now, technically, Ducati wasn't bought by Volkswagen, but by Volkswagen's subsidiary Audi which, in turn, handled the acquisition via Volkswagen's Italian suit, Lamborghini.
Now, while a Volkswagen may never be ecxiting, an Audi, different situation. Audis get to be exciting. In a very, very predictable way. In the way that Audi owners are instructed to feel excitement, to be excited by something about their car. And they do, they are excited.
After all, if anyone knows what about a car should be exciting or how, it will be the people who make cars for a living. It's not like some schmoe who just happens to buy an Audi can appreciate it, has the understanding to feel legit excitement.
No, that takes special education and professional experience. Audis really are built for people who genuinely need to be told when and how to be excited, and by what. Nameless faces, in nameless suits, traveling from one pointless, forgettable meeting to another. In a car that, technically, may have frivolously large amounts of the horsepower, and of the grip, and the everything.
But packaged up for people who don't even know how to buy a lifestyle with their credit card. Packaged in a way that appeals to people who must appear boring, predictable, out of sheer professional need. Who wants a tax-attorney who pimps around in a riced-out Nissan Skyline?
A fucking Porsche Cayenne is too spicy for the people Audi appeals to.
Those are cars built to let someone convince themselves that they have leveled up. People who measure success in life by the numbers. The more expensive a car, the better. And of course, they cannot just get an expensive car. It must be an expensive car that's worth every penny.
How do they measure that? In the Nürburgring lap-times that someone who professionally drives in anger has put down. In the sheer number and volume of driver-assist systems, like traction control, stability control, all those things only the other drivers must rely on.
In the number of cylinders under the hood. The number of calipers on their brakes, and what those are made off.
The resulting car that Volkswagen builds and badges Audi, it is a Space X Falcon 9 in a world of Thor-Agena boosters. It is the starship Enterprise passing overhead of Apollo 13.
It has all the driving technology you could wave a stick at, it has all the bits and bobs that get any petrolhead excited.
And for the Audi owner, that is enough. They themselves don't need to be excited, they are too busy, too reliable, too sombre to get excited.
But the petrolheads throwing a rod* about all the ingredients of the car. That is what a car must do to satisfy them. Ride quality, convenient features, go-fast-capacities? Irrelevant. So long as the Audi owner can tell himself he has all the toys the petrolheads lust for, he is satisfied. Whether or not the car can cover all the checks it's writing is a different tale entirely.
But ah, it wasn't just Audi bought Duc, no, they used Lamborghini as an intermediary.
Lamborghini, the black sheep among VW's flock, the brand that's specifically for the discerning owner who wants a car that impresses all the other people, not just himself.
But even this excitement. Volkswagen has made it freakishly predictable. Remember the Gallardo? When motoring journalists complained, because on the VW Lamborghini, the doors worked. Every time. Because they could see the car behind them when they looked in the mirror. Because the air-conditioning worked.
All of those qualities betrayed the generations that had come before, were a betrayal of everything the Lamborghini name stood for.
It worked like it should. It didn't break apart when given a sharp look. The engine turned on every time. The car didn't become squirrel in the rain, nor at speed.
So there is is, the original hypercar, the car that should drop panties, not laptimes. And somehow, VW had managed to work their black magic.
Admittedly, anyone unfamiliar with automobile arcana, anyone who doesn't understand the difference between a transverse-mount, mid-engine hypercar, and a front-engine supercar would never even find out about the shortcomings of the Lambo's shortcomings.
But those who do, they do. Our kind, we do.
We see a brand with a great history in making vehicles with personality is reduced to just deliver the requirements of corporate strategy that wishes to satisfy any and all passenger car (and passenger car adjacent) needs. So that, no matter where a customer is in their life, no matter how much coin they have to spend, Volkswagen has a bank account or three who really need feeding. One car maker to rule them all, to find them, and in the darkness bind them.
So, an exciting Ducati?
Well, it certainly looks like they have implemented their fetid tactics at Ducati, also. The Scrambler, and all those others. So pretty.
They allowed excitement to creep in. Or perhaps, as a change of pace, they sought it?
Obviously, nothing to excite the rider, as you point out, @Bigshankhank. No matter what, it is still a Volkswagen, and the operator must be protected from anything that might excite them.
Onlookers, meanwhile, they get excited at the pretty. Like someone seeing a Gallardo. Prett.y. Gets them excited.
While, at the same time, the operator can count out his pulse, verifying that it's at resting pace at all times.
Just as the Volkswagen Lambos are for people who want to be seen as a car nut, without all the headaches that traditionally would go hand in hand with such a hobby. The Ducati lets the owner emanate superiorit-rays, because they have the bike everybody else is lusting after. That is how they get their giggle from a bike. Not cornering, not eating miles. They prefer a bike that's boring. They absolutely prefer a bike that will play nice even with noobs or RUBs, a bike that even people who only climb on their bike and gather experience every other week can ride with confidence.
They never paid five figures for a bike that would let them ride in anger and at great speed, gobbling up the twisties- They never paid five figures for a bike that's comfortable for hours and hours, with the clever doodads for strapping down the luggage and whatnot.
No, they paid five figures for a bike that would get everybody else excited, that all the plebs will lust after, with great intensity. And they paid five figures for a bike that, while bringing the optics of two-wheel porn, is safe to ride as Sesame Street is to watch.
*I propose this as a motor-vehicle related euphemism for an erection, can I hear a second?
Turning two fours into a six, and a two, that just has to appeal.