Bryan Simpson’s 1980 Ducati Pantah: A Two-Wheeled 500cc Ferrari
Bryan Simpson had his eye on this 1980 Ducati Pantah for weeks before gifting it to himself for his twenty-first birthday. The year was 1991 and he had been focusing on two used Ducatis on display in a Campbelltown shop – one was a 900 which was a bit beyond Bryan’s price range at about $10K and the other was the red Pantah at $4K.
Like most of us (including legendary author, journalist and wild man Hunter S in his essay ‘Song of the Sausage Creature’ (Cycle World, March 1995), Bryan coveted the 900 but was more than content to settle for the 500cc Pantah, which represented a huge step up from the machine he was riding at the time, a 1942 Harley Davidson. ‘I used to get a few weird looks back in the day,’ he reckons.
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Bryan also owns a modified Harley V-Rod which offers quite the contrast to the Ducati! He’s owned it for years too – ‘the only V-Rod in the world that’s never done a burnout!’ And he still drives a 1999 HiLux Extra Cab. ‘If I find something I like, I keep it,’ says Bryan.
Motorcycles were part of Bryan’s life from when he was 12 and started out on trail bikes with his mates. ‘When we were old enough to ride on the road, we’d go out to Bulli Pass near Wollongong on a Friday night.’ He links his decades-long ownership of the Pantah with these glory days of youth.
Sometime during its previous life the bike’s colour was changed from a grey or blue to bright red and Bryan says he actually might not have bought it had it not been red – or perhaps black (but I reckon he would have).
Image: Ninefive Creative
For about six years, the Pantah was pretty much his daily rider around Sydney, but when Bryan moved to a unit in Glebe he didn’t have room to house the bike, so did a deal with the owner of the Indian restaurant next door. Bryan could store the Ducati in the back verandah of the restaurant, provided he kept an eye on the property. Not once but on two separate occasions he intercepted would-be burglars, earning gratitude and a steady supply of ‘very cheap’ Indian meals.
Then he moved to Bondi and the Duke went into a warehouse in Ultimo and only got ridden about once a month.
In 2001, when he had owned his Pantah for a decade, Bryan moved north to the Gold Coast, while the bike found itself parked up in his parents’ shed in Maclean in the Northern Rivers region – very beautiful but with lots of salt in the air, some of which permeated a variety of holes in the shed to the Ducati’s lasting detriment. It spent a second decade sitting there unridden, slowly transforming itself into a basket case.
Image: Ninefive Creative
It was during the Covid years that Bryan decided the Ducati should be treated to a ground-up restoration – actually more like a reimagining – by Purpose Built Moto of Burleigh Heads. This was a long and expensive process that finally went about $5K over budget, but Bryan is overjoyed by the outcome and full of praise for proprietor Tom and his team. Some components took months to source, like the Avon tyres Bryan was anxious to use. The motor and gearbox were very time-consuming.
Although the Pantah is a significant part of the Ducati story – which I’ll get to soon – it is a model that is unfamiliar to many including me before approaching this Member Spotlight feature and, indeed, Tom.
Bryan found Purpose Built Moto through social media and hanging out at the Iron and Resin Café in Currumbin Waters. Here he met up with other bikers and soon settled on Tom as the person to take charge of recommissioning the Ducati.
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The Pantah is not among the most famous of Ducatis. Compared with the torquey 900s, it was even described by one contemporaneous tester as ‘anaemic’, but hey everything’s relative: the Pantah offered much of the charisma and all the dynamic poise of its larger-engined siblings and carried racing in its genes.
Dr Fabio Taglioni, chiefly famous for having designed the marque’s trademark desmodromic distribution train, should also be celebrated (as Bruno DePrato wrote in CYCLE WORLD on 19 June 2020), for designing the Panta’s 500cc V-twin, the original version of which is housed in the Ducati Museum in Bologna.
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Was Taglioni inspired by Fiat’s example a few years previously with its new DOHC four-cylinder engine? Regardless, he adopted this new technology of a toothed rubber camshaft timing belt (which in the Ducati’s case should be changed at 20,000-km intervals). Another of many refinements was the adoption of Nikasil-coated cylinder bores to replace the traditional cast-iron liners. DePrato continues:
‘The Pantah 500 V-twin was very quiet by Ducati standards, and even the beautifully executed Conti mufflers were more civilised than the thundering ones developed for the 750–900 SS V-twin. Quiet, refined, and beautifully smooth, the Pantah 500 V-twin kept the Ducati performance torch-bright, generating 49 brake horsepower at 9000rpm with 31 pound-feet of peak torque at 6300 rpm. Redline was easily around 10,000rpm. The whole Pantah 500 SL was lean, featuring a sleek top fairing and weighing 390 pounds, and its speed potential was outstanding, easily exceeding 125 mph, with strong acceleration and midrange response. In terms of top speed it dusted the other hot newcomer of the day, the Kawasaki Z500, by a solid 13 mph.’
Image: Ninefive Creative
Naturally, Bryan’s motorcycle is very much better than new. He says the electronic ignition makes a world of difference. And the old clutch was so heavy, you almost needed both hands to operate it. ‘I could hardly hold a beer afterwards,’ he reckons. Now that would be a serious problem!
For the money Bryan has spent, he could obviously have bought himself a brand new motorcycle. But the whole point has been to celebrate old memories, many of which were shared with mates now departed. With all our Member Spotlight features, there is a deep human story to accompany the motorcycle or car, and it has been a privilege to share Bryan Simpson’s.
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