Lots of famous makes have skeletons in the cupboard, models they’d rather you didn’t know they ever made. So how about the last-ever Ducati single-cylinder streetbike, of which 3,846 examples were built from 1975 to 1979, which was also incidentally the first Ducati motorcycle to be built with a left-foot gearchange?
It wasn’t just the fact that the 125 Regolarità and its later Six Days variant represented the Bologna factory’s only serious attempt to target the offroad market, but it was that contradiction in terms – a Ducati two-stroke!
It’s true that, like the dozens of other Italian makes trying to carve a slice of the country’s huge appetite for affordable personal transportation in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Ducati had earlier made several eminently forgettable 50-100cc two-stroke models, yet which collectively represented the major part of Ducati production in the 1960s. But by 1975 when the 125 Regolarità was launched in the marketplace, Ducati had moved on, and was now well established as the leading Italian four-stroke performance brand, with a twin-cylinder sportbike range derived from Paul Smart’s V-twin Imola 200-winner. The idea that it should ever have tried to carve out a slice of the then-booming 125cc enduro market for sixteen-year olds competing with 23 other makes seems very – well, short-sighted, let’s say.
Mind you, bureaucrats have never been much good at running bike companies, and ever since 1967 Ducati had formed part of the Italian government’s EFIM (Ente Partecipazioni e Finanziamento Industria Manifatturiera) state-owned conglomerate responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company and 114 others within Italy. However, it had the good fortune to see Fredmano Spairani appointed as its CEO in 1969, a professional
