Ducati Scramblers
IT’S A RED HOT DAY IN A RED HOT Mexican desert in June, 1969 and the Doug Douglas/Jim McClurg team has just crossed the line after winning the inaugural Baja motorcycle race. Their mount is a standard Ducati 350cc Scrambler, which looks more like a commuter machine than a desert racer. Despite this, it’s done the job.
Later, the Baja 1000 would be immortalised in the 1972 film On Any Sunday but the 1969 event is scarcely documented – except for an old pamphlet picture on Google (and even then McClurg’’s name is spelt wrong). But publicity vacuums aside, the 1969 Baja marked a hugely significant stage in the evolution of Ducati’s off-road output –including the two machines in this feature.
These machines – an R/T 450 Desmo and a 250 Scrambler – belong to the same family tree as that 1969 Baja victor – a family tree whose genesis is thanks to a Transatlantic business deal, Italian politics and ever-expanding crankcases. And at the heart of all this is one man: a Hungarian Holocaust refugee called Joseph Berliner. RAY Dudding’s R/T 450 and 250 Scrambler have come a long way since they rolled out of the factory in 1971.
Both were designed in Italy, one was built on home turf, the other in Spain and both were shipped to the States and ridden in California. Indeed, these single-cylinder machines were worldly before
