A unique take on Ducati’s
Monster 1200 R

We’ve been starting at the Monster 821 in our garage lately and keep coming back to Young Gun Speed Shop’s Ducati Pandora for inspiration. Utilizing the most amped up version in the Monster family – the Monster 1200 R – as their base, the Swiss-based Young Guns built what they are calling a hybrid between a GP-bike and a contemporary café racer.

As much as we dig their Pandora build, we especially dig who the Young Guns are, and what they represent. The Young Gun Speed Shop located in Rapperswil, Switzerland with members of varying backgrounds and ages sharing the common bond of motorcycles. What started off as a small crew grew into more and more members who now all meet at the shop’s HQ, go for rides and build bikes. Doesn’t get much better than that!

OK, back to the build. The guys stripped down their M1200R and wanted to keep the classic lines from previous Ducatis like the old 900SS and 750 Sports. They first build the rear subframe then tackled the seat/tank combo, working on a final fiberglass monocoque.

In order to maintain the sleek lines they sought, they decided to relocate the tank to the tail. With two combined aluminum tanks the bike can hold a total 9 liters (2.4 gal) of petrol.

Where the faux tank sits, is now host the brain of the motorbike: everything from the ABS to battery has been hid under there.

The custom exhaust was built in-house with the megaphones being pressed out of a single sheet. We kind of dig the way they replaced the rubber hoses with aluminum pipes to ‘fit the radical appearance of the bike’.

So as mentioned, we’re sitting here kicking tires of our Bullitt 821 and talking about what we can do to make the build more interesting. Turns out, there’s a bunch of dudes on the other side of the world, doing the same damn thing, and clearly having a lot of fun in the process. Gotta tip our hat to that. Cheers boys – hope we cross paths one day out on the open road.