Ducati finally owned by Audi for 1.1 billion dollars

After a long hiatus, many discussions, many rumors around the Ducati sell off, Audi has finally bought Ducati, the Italian motorcycle giant, for a whooping 1.1 billion US dollars or 860 Euros. With this strategic buy, Audi aims to reach another level of zenith. The buy would increase the brand, Volkswagen Group’s importance as a whole. Bikes was a range into which the group had as yet not ventured, though Volkswagen was doing well and strong in their range of cars, marine engines, trucks, etc. Now they have, by buying Ducati, added another feather in their cap, performance bikes. Seems like VW head’s Ferdinand Piech’s interest in motorcycles was the major force to drive VW group to take up Ducati under their wings. But this could as well be a hush-hush fact. This could just help the gossip mongrels.

Official announcement for the trade will be announced today, probably by the evening, in a meeting that is to be held in Hamburg; the announcement could come with other small details about the deal too. Realizing the loss VW faced when few years back they rued the opportunity of acquiring Ducati, this time when Ducati was up for sale again, Piech lost no time and effort and staright away pounded on the option. Ducati has been put on sale by InvestIndustrial, Ducati’s stakeholder of 70%. This is leading to speculations that the 1.1 billion US dollars is for the stake in Ducati and also be including the debts that it has for its current bookings.

Brand Ducati has been in the business for over 6 decades, a well known name at that, producing the high performance bikes, but never too high on profitability. When it comes to profit earning, Ducati stands at a loss. So when Audi, a highly successful brand, buys Ducati, it is expected that it will totally present a different look for Ducati, making it rise to a new high; probably making BMW Motorrad face a tough competition.

Lamborghini, also owned by Audi, loses on carbon footprint front. Being Lamborghini, low emissions are something expected of the supercars. Ducati, which render a way lesser tailpipe emission as compared to other supercars and superbikes, will be a great help to Audi in gaining on this front, since Europe is now getting strict versions of emission norms. While Ducati can gain on the front that it will be getting mammoth of investment for fresh products, lot more researching can be done now on; in short, lot more exciting and smarter motorcycles. So, this could be more of a give and take game for Audi and Ducati, both gaining well from each other. We, in India, can as well hope for more mean machines coming from the brand, since India gets just a limited number of bikes, like Ducati Monster, Ducati Diavel, Ducati Streetfighter, Ducati Superbike. Can India get more on the likes with new trade?