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At $12,995, the Ducati Streetfighter 848 undercuts the Fiat 500 Abarth by $9005. Read on to learn more about The Tempest and the Teapot in this news article brought to you by the automotive experts at Automobile Magazine.
Elon Musk merely dreamed of building rockets and electric cars, the front-passenger air bag wasn't yet mandatory, and the euro currency didn't exist when Americans last had Italian speed on the cheap. Long past its Graduate-fueled prime, the Alfa Romeo Spider bowed out in 1994, and that was it for reasonably accessible Italian driving pleasure. Fiat had made an ambivalent effort to vend its wares before abandoning these shores a decade earlier, and the truth was that its cars hardly kept up with the Alfas even when modified by exhaust systems and other speed parts from the Abarth performance division.
So from the land of extra-virgin olive oil and some of the most outrageous racing boats, airplanes, and automobiles ever conceived, only Ducati and Moto Guzzi, small manufacturers of motorcycles, consistently kept the spark going. Although Ducati sometimes flickered along the way, it ultimately produced a series of ever-more-sensational bikes that cost roughly the same as routine service on exotic Italian cars.
