2025 Ducati Panigale V4: The End of the Single-Sided Swingarm

The new, 2025-spec Ducati Panigale loses the single-sided swingarm of the earlier model

Last week, Ducati unveiled the new, 2025-spec Panigale and as you might expect, the new bike represents the latest and greatest of all motorcycle technologies known to mankind. ‘Ducati's mission is to enrich people's lives through technologically sophisticated motorcycles characterised by sensual beauty. Few bikes like the new Panigale V4, the seventh generation of Ducati superbikes, achieve this mission,’ said Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali while unveiling the bike during the Ducati World Première. The new Panigale V4 S weighs 187 kilos, while it’s Desmosedici Stradale 1103cc V4 engine produces 216 horsepower, a phenomenal combination, and definitely one that only the best riders on the planet can ever hope to use to its full potential. And for those who want still more, please note that you can use the optional Ducati Performance racing exhaust by Akrapovič, with which power output goes up to 228bhp.

Now, I love the way the new Panigale looks, which is not too different from its immediate predecessor, except for one very big different. The old single-sided swingarm is gone, replaced with a regular, rather more conventional swingarm – the kind you’d find on every other Japanese and European litre-class superbike, with the sole exception of the MV Agusta Superveloce 1000. Ducati says the change has been carried out in the interests of optimised lateral stiffness, which will help riders corner harder and faster than ever before. ‘A new double-sided swingarm – Ducati Hollow Symmetrical Swingarm – was developed, a lightweight and innovative design that reduces lateral stiffness (-37% compared to the previous single-sided swingarm) and weight thanks to the two large lightening slots, improving traction when exiting corners and the rider's feeling during acceleration,’ says a press note from Ducati.

Now, of course Ducati engineers know best and I’m sure the new swingarm will provide a better riding experience to the 0.1% of riders who are skilled enough to push the bike to its absolute limits. For the rest of us – regular riders who are not blessed with superhuman riding talent – we’ve lost an important design element, a visual cue that made Ducati superbikes strikingly different from superbikes from most other brands. But then the single-sided swingarm has been dying out gradually over the last few decades; bikes that were factory-fitted with a single-sided swingarm, like the Honda RC30, Honda RC45, Yamaha GTS1000 (which had a single-sided swingarm not at the back but at the front!), Ducati 916/996/998, Ducati 1098/1198 and all the Panigales that came before the 2025-spec model – they are all gone. From what I can remember, a few BMWs, KTMs, MV Agustas and the Kawasaki H2R are the only streetbikes that still use single-sided swingarms.

In the larger scheme of things, that Ducati has abandoned the single-sided swingarm is perhaps not all that important after all. For one, the new bike probably handles better than its predecessor. And the other thing is, it’s anyway not like I had enough money and was going to buy a new Panigale – that probably won’t happen in this lifetime. And hence, I can happily continue to look at old photographs of my beloved Honda RC45 and other superbikes from the 1980s and the 1990s…  :-)