Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Rider Power Survey - comments

[Iconic944ss]

I quite like RiDE magazine these days and when allowed like to sit down and read it cover to cover on a nightshift, not that I'm saying its ALL of interest to me.

However, the rider power survey is noteworthy - seems they have changed the way the data is analysed to bias "real-world" bikes and the the overall placings are an average of the individual rankings supplied by each owner.

8915 completed the form on-line, while 1134 did it via paper = 10049 replies.

In this particular analysis with the top 150 bikes detailed in a listing - Ducati didnt do very well at all, even the tourer range which I found curious:

Position 87 - ST4s
Position 90 - 999
Position 113 - 749
Position 139 - M600 / M620
Position 144 - 916 / 996 / 998*
Position 149 - 748

The 916/996/998 series comes in for particular mention as having the WORST running costs of any bike in the survey (the fact that they also had one of the BEST handling & suspension scores only got a passing mention).

Any other Ducati was outside of the top 150 because the individual bike scored less than replies 20 each!

I find this a bit curious when the 916/996/998 bikes were listed together and yet the 900ss/750ss were listed individually???

Other bikes with LESS THAN 20 votes:
Multistrada
620 Multistrada
1000DS
M750
Monster S2R

I can only imagine we are too busy riding our bikes instead of writing about them

What started sounding alarm bells a little for me is that the R1 which won overall in 2005 only placed 27th this year.

If the Survey was ranked purely on 'Overall Impression' BDG would of been pleased with the KTM adventure 950 voted 2nd (was actually 4th anyways) and the 999 boosted from 90th place to 6th with only the top 10 listed for the alternative rankings.

Also there was an interesting 'Mythbuster' section relating to the perceptions of the riders surveyed:

Best Engine performance:
Most of the Japs equal, Aprillia won - Ducati rated average?

Best Gearbox:
Suzuki by a reasonable margin over the Japs but - Ducati only just behind.

Best Brakes:
Aprillia by a tiny margin from Ducati.

Best Build Quality:
Honda by quite a margin overall - Ducati some way back.

Best Reliability:
Honda again - Ducati worst overall.

Easiest to Maintain:
Honda by a huge margin over the average - Ducati, last a little way behind Aprillia.

Not too many shocks there in the perception but, I cant help wondering how much of it actually driven by magazine and newspapers - on the message board here there are surprisingly few posts on reliability, totally outnumbered by those fine tuning suspension and making mods of their own.

Cheers - Frank