[twpd]

Moto748, 748, 50k miles.

Enough said.

Ducati's rep stems mostly from the late 70's to the mid 80's when the bikes were unreliable with crappy electrics. Now it's mostly a myth peddled by jealousy and ignorance and perpetuated by lazy stupid jounos.
I ride with a lot of the lads from hartside.com and I'm sick of the **** they talk about Ducati reliability despite the fact that the only bikes that have ever gone wrong/broken down in the group are Jap bikes. I get all the **** about service intervals (despite the Ducs having longer intervals), costs (despite paying about 1/2 - 2/3rds of their service costs) , parts prices etc.

None of them have first hand experience of owning a Ducati over any length of time - yet time & time again the same rubbish is trotted out - it's always the same old friend of a friend nonsense. In 11 years of owning Ducs not one of mine had broken down bar my SP which, was down to owner-stupidity when I broke it.
I went to the south of France on my SP - my "mates" were runnng bets on it breaking down. It never missed a beat but, both Blades broke with electrical probs.
On Hartside we've had a Gixxer 1000's gearbox s h i t itself, ditto a Thundercat, a CBR develop fuel pump probs plus sevral other bikes go wrong. Meanwhile my Duca keep on running. Most amusing.

If people choose to be blind or ignore the evidence before them then there's little you can do. Life is too short.