The first basic design was fully detailed in CAD, machined out of ABS thermoplastic polymer, and then mocked up on the bike (above). “Bruce Lee was our philosophical inspiration: Lean muscularity with agility and speed!” “A design that feels futuristic, seamless and lightweight,” Bill adds. The design goal was to create a flow across the top of the bike, drawing eyes away from the electric components and frame, and focusing more attention and ‘visual weight’ on the front end. “The Zero was mostly conceived sitting at a CAD workstation, after hours, and switching between hardcore 3D design and loose napkin-grade sketches.”
“It’s far from the sexiness of welding and hammering away in a fabrication shop,” Bill says. So the famous Portland show became the target, and Huge fired up their computers. As the bike began to take shape in CAD, there was growing interest from Zero HQ in helping to finish the FXS and get a public reaction.īrian Wiseman, Zero’s VP of product development, heard that the tire company Shinko was looking for a bike to display at The One Moto Show. Range in the city is somewhere up to 100 miles (you can get models with a much larger range) and weight is a commendable 293 lb (133 kg).īill and his team slowly began to work on concepts for the custom. The FXS is Zero’s entry-level model: a commuter bike with supermoto styling that costs just $10,495-a little less than a Sportster 1200 Custom.
A 2018 FXS soon arrived, along with its CAD files. Then Bill asked Zero if Huge could build a custom bike as a side project. “We ended up working on some projects together, and hopefully some of our design influence will be seen on the next generation bikes.” “Zero reached out to us a couple years ago, after you featured our ‘MONO RACR’ Honda CBR,” Bill told us. So we dropped a line to Huge Moto’s boss, Bill Webb, to get the story on this surprise hit-and the very 21st century design process. But there was an interloper lurking amongst the chrome and carburetors: this futuristic Zero from Huge Moto of San Francisco.Īs soon as the Zero was revealed, it starting popping up everywhere on social media. Petersen also built a custom one-off exhaust for their Ducati 999 CF build, which sneaks out underneath the lower fairing, and features individual tubes for each cylinder.The One Moto Show is a cornucopia of analog delights, gleaming with metalflake and raw, hand-beaten bodywork. Titanium bits abound, including a titanium steering stem nut. Helping give the bike its name, the Arete Americana Ducati 999 CF has carbon fiber fairings from Ducati Performance, while the RAD solo-seat is self-supporting and is too made from carbon fiber. Sporting a tail and tank from Radical Ducati (Arete Americana is the North American distributor for the Spanish firm), along with a singe-sided swingarm conversion from an 848, the Ducati 999 CF is our kind of custom: subtle, yet to the point, and Arete Americana has ensured that all the right go-fast bits were included in the build. So, it warms out hearts to see that there are people out there still building off of Terblanche’s work, and one of them is Bryan Petersen at Arete Americana and his Ducati 999 CF. However, the more we look at the 999’s staked-headlight and double-sided swingarm design, two of the biggest design elements that Ducatisti took umbrage with at the bike’s launch, the more we think that the Ducati 999 Superbike will become a collector’s classic, and stand as a unique time in the Italian brand’s history. It might not have been the sales disaster that many make it out to have been, but Pierre Terblanche’s Ducati 999 remains one of the most controversial machines ever to come out of Borgo Panigale.
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