So Motodisiac and I went down to one of the motorcycle dealers tonight to check out the Hypermotard and the Super Duke. Of course they did not allow any test rides. We are yet to go to another dealership down in Orange County that had offered test rides for the Hypermotards. So this comparison review will be based on only visual impressions from walking around these bikes and sitting on them. Lets start.

The only Ducati Hypermotards this dealer had were 1100S which will ring you up to 14,5 thousand dollars MSRP as opposed to 11,995 for the regular Hypermotard. As usual with all Italian bikes there is attention to details and style. The bike does not feel cheap. The seating posture is somewhat high reminiscent of the fact that it is a supermoto type bike. The posture is aggressive which will most definitely translate into the riding style and per multiple reviews of the Hypermotard you can’t ride it in a non-aggressive manner.

The Super Duke was a bit different. It looked a bit smaller and once on it felt MUCH lighter despite of the almost identical weight. The Super Duke is actually 16 lbs (7 kg) heavier. The styling and attention to details were absolutely inferior to the same of the Hypermotard. Coming in at whopping 13,5 thousand MSRP you would expect a better look feel. The bike did seem a bit toy-ish. Don’t get me wrong I am sure it would be fun to ride. We are talking visuals now. Also the seating posture was more street riding like, imposing less aggressiveness even though the Super Duke would probably smoke the Hypermotard due to the fact that it’s got 28 more horses in its engine.

So after over 30 minutes of walking around and seating on the two of those bikes the following conclusions were made

• the KTM Super Duke has a nicer seating posture
• the Hypermotard has the much superior styling and detailing
• the Hypermotard somewhat stands up to its high price better than the Super Duke

Despite of all of the above the biggest turn off is the price. There aren’t a lot of used Super Dukes and Hypermotards for sale. Actually I am yet to see a single used Super Duke for sale. Motodisiac and I have found a couple of used Hypermotards. But apparently due to the fact that the “oldest” Hypermotard one can find is one year old or less the owners are jacking up their sale prices. A couple of ads we found were for the somewhat tricked out Hypermotards where the owners wanted a firm MSRP price only because they’d invested in a custom Termignoni exhaust or something despite the fact that their bikes are no longer new. So it does seem like both of us will put the Hypermotard hysteria on hold. Or may be not :).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.