2006 Bimota DB5 Race Bike – We need Bimota to make this again.
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Bimota started making bikes in 1973 when three Italian guys — Valerio Bianchi, Giuseppe Morri, and Massimo Tamburini — wanted to build really cool motorcycles with fancy frames and fast engines. They weren’t happy with the chassis of other manufacturers and set out to build a better-handling motorcycle that could handle serious racing. The DB5 came out in 2005 and carried on that same goal from all the previous years. It came with an air-cooled, two-valve Ducati 1000DS engine. The Supersports are okay for riding on the track — they can be made fast and don’t handle too badly — but Bimota saw an opportunity to make it even better.
Bimota produced various versions of the DB5 from 2005 through 2016. Roughly 345 machines were produced during those years. The motorcycle you see here is a 2006 and the original owner was none other than Tom Cruise. Tom had blown up the engine riding at Laguna Seca and the bike was sold back to Bimota. It made its way over to one of the premier Ducati performance shops in the US, Moto Corse Performance run by Chris Boy. The shop had imported a few of these new fancy Italian show stoppers to produce the best race bikes imaginable.
These machines use the ‘narrow case’ Ducati engines, which were found on the Multistrada and the 4-valve superbikes. However, with the release of the Hypermotard, owners got an easy replacement option — and that’s exactly what happened with this bike. The original DS engine was tossed and replaced with a Hypermotard 1100 engine. This one is still 1080cc but gets a power bump from high-compression Pistal pistons, ported heads, oversized titanium valves, and VeeTwo camshafts. It exhales through a full HPE race exhaust system, and the tuning is handled by a Microtec ECU.
The previous owner of the bike got in touch with BST and had a special-order run of wheels made specifically to fit the DB5. The front wheels are simple as they are common rotor and spacers that you’ll find on other Ducati’s. The rear wheel is closer to a 749/999 fitment than the supersports however it uses a different rear rotor. With the BST Carbon Blackstone wheels and the composite ETI Fuelcel, this Bimota weighs in at 355lbs with 1 gallon of fuel (enough for a sprint race). To help drop more weight, we’ve swapped out the steel shock spring for an RSC titanium spring and tossed titanium bolts all over the bike.
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