Ducati Scrambler Time Scramble

Ducati's reintroduction of the Scrambler takes me back to my motorcycling youth. In Fairfield, Iowa, at the height of the Vietnam War, the local college made a huge (if short-lived) business out of providing student draft deferments to rich Ivy League drop-outs. Those "college Joes," as we derisively called them, were especially fond of Honda Scramblers. For us Fairfield homeboys (whom the "Joes," with equal disdain, called "townies"), that was good reason never to buy one.

The alternative was the original Ducati Scrambler, which local dealer Duke Schmidt enthusiastically sold to a dozen or so CL72-averse townies determined to embarrass the Joes come Sunday at the local scrambles track. Those sales helped put Duke’s Cycle Sales on the map (Duke’s recently celebrated 50 years at the same location!), and in a commentary on the mid-1960s motorcycle economy, they also helped make Duke one of the year’s top 10 dealers of the Berliner Motor Corporation line. Berliner imported Benelli, Ducati, Matchless, and Norton, and Duke’s “prize” for outstanding salesmanship was the opportunity to add to his floor plan one of the few Matchless G85CS Scramblers ever built.

The extent this was actually an honor depends on one’s bias. Said a Bonham’s auction blurb for a ’65 G85CS: “Less than 200 were built for sale but thus mounted, Vic Eastwood, Chris Horsfield, and Dave Nicoll enjoyed many successes.” In contrast, vintage racebike expert Tom White said, “With a $1,400 retail price , the last-ditch Matchless G85CS would be a complete failure in both sales and racing.”

So I ended up not on a Ducati Scrambler but as the clueless owner of Duke's Matchless. How clueless? Well, I decided to make the bike a short-tracker and "broke it in" on the circular, living-room-size "test track" behind the shop, around which we townies careened with wild abandon, them on their Ducati Scramblers and me on my Matchless, the bikes constantly laid over hard left. That's how I discovered that the G85's oil-pump pickup was perched high in the right-hand side of the crankcase! I'm confident my G85CS owns the model record for the shortest life span of the original main bearings.