Why Wear a Panerai Luminor to Ride a Ducati Monster?

My first Ducati Monster experience scared the daylights out of me. Two decades ago, the tangle of big cylinders and tubular steel was aptly named: it blasted 148 horsepower to the rear wheel, its feral powerband unfettered by traction control or anti-lock brakes. The snorting wheelie machine was fully engorged on Ducati DNA: trellis frame, Desmodromic valves, and a single-sided swingarm that showcased its forged Marchesini wheel like a postmodern sculpture. The Monster S4Rs were harrowing and unforgiving. I fell hard, for the bike not the pavement, despite the bike's sincerest efforts to throw me off.

Twenty years later I'm wailing down Angeles Crest Highway in the latest Monster, this time with another Italian totem on my wrist: a Panerai Luminor, PAM01731. The Ducati shares little more than name with its steroidal ancestor. Gone are signatures like the trellis frame, Desmo valves and single-sided swingarm, replaced with a more efficient aluminum monocoque, techy variable valvetrain, and an alloy double-sided swingarm. There's also enough electronics to launch a low earth orbit rocket: predictive 6-axis inertial sensors, variable ABS that considers lean angle, supersmart traction control, and a host of other systems. The switch-up begs an obvious question: is the kinder, more refined Monster as lovable as the O.G.?

Panerai has been reborn more than once since Giovanni Panerai opened his shop in 1860, and it still doesn't overthink the basics. Hand-wound P.6000, 19 jewels, Incabloc, three days of reserve. Tool-watch plumbing, in other words: no rotor, no complications, a shock system any watchmaker on earth can source and service. Where the Ducati shed its signatures, the PAM keeps every one of them: cushion case, crown protector, blocky buckle. The Rolex years are in there too, the 1930s and 1940s when the cases and the movements came from Rolex and the dials were Panerai's own. The break with the past is the calibre itself, an in-house replacement for the ETA/Unitas units that carried so many Panerais before it.

The mechanical timepiece does have its unorthodoxies, among them a more contemporary 44mm size that shrinks the Ref. 6152/1 it revisits, a watch whose mongo 47mm case offered supreme underwater visibility. Panerai's audience widened when Sylvester Stallone famously wore a 5218-201/A on screen in 1996. "I did a film called Daylight, and I wanted to wear a watch that no one had ever seen," the actor later recalled. "I strapped this on my wrist that day and didn't take it off until the end of filming." The nascent brand was emerging, but didn't truly get a new lease on life until, not unlike Ducati's 2012 takeover by Audi, the Vendôme Group, now known as Richemont, acquired the Florentine watchmaker in 1997. Like Ducati, Panerai has grown from a cult brand into a mainstream phenomenon, making this motorcycle/watch pairing particularly timely.

Though finished in familiar Ducati Red, this Monster's design iconography has largely gone the way of performance optimization. From the cockpit I'm presented with a 5-inch TFT screen, five buttons for menu navigation, and a slick series of graphical representations for fine-tuning adjustments like customizable engine braking and wheelie control levels. The 890cc 90-degree twin cranks slowly to life and settles into a hearty, but not raucous idle. I release the low-effort clutch and the bike creeps forward easily without throttle application thanks to a technology which gently feeds the throttle. It's still possible to stall the bike, just not as easy as before.

The Monster devours Angeles Crest Highway's Wagnerian-scale corners with benign ease. Power delivery is smooth and tractable, thanks in part to powertrain improvements which include intake variable timing. Gone is the chug-a-lug choppiness of low-end grunt, replaced by a progressive climb to its 11,500 rpm rev limiter. There generally isn't much need to wind up the engine so hard thanks to generous low-end torque, 70% of which is available from 3,000 rpm. Similarly, handling is light and easy thanks to favorable geometry and a relatively light curb weight of 386 lbs, without fuel. The only suspension adjustability is rear preload, a departure from some previous Monsters' more premium setups. The Showa front fork and rear monoshock do a decent job keeping the bike in control under most conditions.

While the Ducati's traction control system is performing thousands of calculations per second, the Panerai's earthy tobacco dial reflects the passing landscape with the enduring face of an old master oil portrait. It's a curious juxtaposition, the bike's eager thrust into the future and the watch's adherence to the past. And while I do enjoy every moment of the ride, from the mellow lope around the city to the lively romp up the mountain, I also miss the tension of a charismatic machine whose rawness may or may not let you live another day. The bike, parked later in my driveway, cools off as I head back into the house both exhilarated and a little bit nostalgic. Motorcycling has always been a dangerous proposition, but that appeal lies in the interaction with the machine as a feast for the senses. The new Monster is smoother, more refined, and easier to master, all good things for the marque given the general public's waning interest in motorcycles. 

The Panerai manages to evoke its past without needing to make concessions to user friendliness. This miniaturized mechanical wonder, though palatable in its more accommodating 44mm size, is the ultimate real deal, retaining its period appearance and mechanical soul without having to bend to regulations or lap times.