2023 Ducati DesertX | First Ride

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We throw a leg over Ducati’s much-hyped DesertX ADV machine in Aspen, Colorado, and flog it in the dirt, on the road, and through the air.

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Motorcycle teaser videos, those gaudy sources of temptation, are baldfaced attempts to fire the buying public’s frenzy through breathtaking images of performance and adventure. And Ducati’s, and its DesertX promos in particular, work like a charm. Early footage of Antoine Méo blasting desert dunes and ripping a motocross track worked their seductive magic; customers went running to dealerships, deposit in hand, for a motorcycle unlike anything the Italian company has produced before.

But when we get past the undeniably amazing images, the real question is whether the DesertX can live up to all the hype. And before we answer that question, we need to take a deep dive into the bike itself.

A few things about the DesertX make Ducati’s offering unique. The press kit emphasizes early on that this is the first modern Ducati with 21-inch front and 18-inch rear wheel sizes. That’s important because it defined the direction that designers wanted to take with the bike, namely, building an extremely off-road-capable adventure motorcycle. The riding position was optimized to make standing on the pegs comfortable without compromising the seated position. The engine may be the tried-and-true 937cc liquid-cooled Testastretta 11° twin that has powered a whole stable of models, but it’s been painstakingly tweaked for this demanding application. And the styling is a departure from the sharp angular lines of the Multistrada, for instance, with a much more retro-rally vibe.

Engine
If there is a do-all be-all engine in Ducati’s lineup, it’s the 11-degree Testastretta. Found in the Hypermotard 950, Monster, Multistrada V2, and SuperSport 950, this has been the engine powering the company’s middleweight non-superbike machines in recent years. In the DesertX, the liquid-cooled DOHC desmodromic four-valve L-twin has the same 94-by-67.5mm bore and stroke measurements. It’s fed by a pair of 53mm throttle bodies with ride-by-wire control, passing exhaust gases through a stainless steel system with a single catalytic converter into a single muffler, which in our case was an accessory Termignoni unit.

The engine produces a claimed 110 hp at 9,250 rpm and 68 lb.-ft. of peak torque at 6,500 rpm. For reference, the last SuperSport 950 we put on the Cycle World dyno produced 98.1 hp at 9,220 rpm and 62.3 lb.-ft. of torque at 7,770 rpm at the rear wheel. Another nice advantage of the engine is that the desmo valve check intervals are 18,000 miles apart, with 9,000-mile maintenance intervals.

In comparison to other models, such as the Multistrada V2, that use the same basic engine, the DesertX uses much shorter first and second gears (38/14 and 31/17 versus 37/15 and 30/17); gearing is shorter all the way through fifth, with a tall sixth (23/25 versus the Multi’s 23/24) for on-road cruising and fuel efficiency. The final drive ratios are also dramatically different: The DesertX running a 49-tooth rear sprocket versus the Multi’s 43 (both have a 15-T on the front). The goal here is clear, to optimize the gearing for real slow-speed off-road riding. The wet eight-disc clutch has slipper functionality and hydraulic actuation.

Electronics
We can’t talk about engine performance without first talking about the bike’s electronic rider-aid systems. In the convenience and comfort department, the bike has cruise control and an up-and-down quickshifter. The DesertX features six riding modes, a Ducati first, with Sport, Touring, Urban, Wet, Enduro, and Rally. All modes have presets for three levels of Engine Brake Control (EBC); eight levels of Ducati Traction Control (DTC); four levels of Ducati Wheelie Control (DWC); three levels plus Off of Cornering ABS; four power settings, Full, High, Medium, and Low; and the ability to set throttle response to Dynamic or Smooth.

The Enduro and Rally rider modes, in their base settings, are the biggest departure from the other four modes. In Enduro, horsepower defaults to Low (75 hp) with Dynamic response, ABS on 2, DTC on 3, no wheelie control, and EBC set to 2. Rally mode has Full power (110 hp), Dynamic response, ABS set to 1, DTC set to 2, wheelie control off, and EBC set to 2. The cool thing is that all of these can be customized. ABS can also be completely deactivated in dirt modes.