Ducati

DUCATI’S new cruiser, the XDiavel S, has won the ‘Red Dot Award 2016: Best of the Best’ award for its style and design. The XDiavel S takes the award in the product design category, which basically means that it’s the best of the best when it comes to product design.

Winning products are chosen because of their use of design and innovation, and when you think about it, the XDiavel S is very innovative – it’s a a cruiser that handles well, stops well and goes well.

As you’d expect, Ducati is very happy with this and says that the award shows how ‘a Ducati motorcycle can be a style, innovation and performance icon – all in one.’

Speaking about the XDiavel S’s success, Andrea Ferraresi, manager of Ducati’s style centre said:

‘Long, low-slung, muscular, with contemporary lines and sophisticated componentry. Above all sexy. On one hand the motorcycle’s design was inspired by the cruiser world, on the other hand Ducati DNA. It drives the cruiser concept headlong into a modern context: a real “Technocruiser” with futuristic styling and state-of-the-art technology. Extreme in its proportions, the XDiavel was deliberately design “element by element”. If you observe each one individually, it is as if the frame, the fuel tank, the headlamp, the tailpiece and the silencer live a life of their own, yet at the same time they go to make up a perfectly balanced, harmonious whole. A prize such as the Red Dot Award rewards Ducati’s creativity and innovation as much as it repays our tenacity in facing new challenges and venturing along new roads.’

It’s not first time Ducati has won this award – the 1199 Panigale took the honours in 2013, so in the eyes of the design cognoscenti, it must be doing something right.

The Red Dot awards have been running since 1955, and as we understand it, they’re sort of like the Oscars for stuff, with past winners including Porsche and Bosch (for its notoriously sexy home appliances).