Audi Plots Takeover of Italian Motorcycle Builder Ducati

Ducati and AMG partnership: headed for divorce? Audi is about to swallow Ducati, the Italian manufacturer of iconic, high-performance bikes. Audi won't officially confirm the rumors, but a source close to the negotiations tells us that the talks between the German carmaker and Ducati's owner, Italian financial holding company Investindustrial, have progressed quite far. The companies already have reached the due-diligence stage, which encompasses exclusive negotiations and is expected to last until mid-April, at which point the sale could become official—or the bike maker could go back on the market. Ducati currently produces some of the most electrifying bikes on the market, including the Monster, the 848 series, and the 1199 Panigale. "Ducati is a profitable company," says our Audi source, adding: "We expect the market for motorcycles to grow strongly in all segments."A report pegs the purchase price between $330 million and $400 million, approximately $265 million of which would go toward satisfying Ducati's creditors. There's more to this scenario than that: Ducati is not only a leader in lightweight technology, it has accumulated vast knowledge in the application of desmodromic valve systems, which work especially well on high-revving engines. Ducati's ability to extract extreme power from relatively small engines has reportedly impressed Ferdinand Piëch, the Volkswagen Group supervisory board's chairman who previously expressed interest in acquiring Ducati in 2008. Ducati would join another high-performance Italian brand, Lamborghini, under the Audi umbrella. No doubt Piëch will be pleased by the fact that both BMW and Daimler will fret at the acquisition. BMW Motorrad, struggling with shedding its reputation as a conservative "lawyer's motorcycle" in Europe and having lost longtime chief designer David Robb, will have to deal with a strengthened Ducati owned by an extremely ambitious competitor. And the one-and-a-half-year-old cooperation between Mercedes-AMG and Ducati, which led to joint auto-show appearances, the Ducati Diavel AMG Special Edition motorcycle, and a Mercedes-Benz SLK55 AMG painted in "Streetfighter Yellow"—not to mention Ducati's corporate fleet being stocked with Mercedes cars—will come to a screeching halt. That said, the partnership could grow closer: Daimler is said to be very interested if Audi fails to seal the deal. from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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