An old Ducati is a trophy in any garage—just like the prized 900 SS at RossMadrid.

By all rights, Ducati should have become a footnote in motorcycle history, like Laverda, Mondial, Morini and a host of other once-famous Italian marques. And yet Ducati has kept the flame alive, from the glory days of the 1960s and early 1970s, through the dark 1980s, when even the genius of Dr. Taglioni and his famous desmodromic valvetrain were insufficient to keep the complicated and expensive Bolognese machines from giving way to popular Japanese bikes that were quick, reliable and cheap.

Now that modern Ducati is under the aegis of Lamborghini, its future is secure—these state-of-the-art machines are still built in Bologna by workers as passionate about Ducatis as the people who ride them.