Cagiva owned Ducati for a time so that is my excuse for including the pretty Italian V4, 500cc 2-stroke Grand Prix racer. The bike was never extremely successful although it did win 3 GP’s with Eddie Lawson and John Kocinski at the controls.


Cagiva tried many different iterations of the machine including a full carbon fiber frame and a carbon fiber swing-arm that predates of course the carbon swing-arm on the Ducati GP9 MotoGP machine. This machine is from a time when the rider’s skill was the only form of traction control available and it took amazing talent to race the 500cc, 130kg (286lb), 180 bhp machines to their limit where the rider was just a small error away from a vicious high side.