The Lego Technic Ducati Panigale V4 R is an excellent addition to the long list of mid-size Technic bikes with working engines that started all the way back in 1991 with the 8838 shock cycle. It is the first Technic bike to feature a transmission, as it has two working gears and a neutral gear. The gearbox is easily the highlight of the build, as fitting both a functional engine and a transmission in such a compact build makes this set an engineering masterpiece!

The building experience is delightful for a smallish set. You start with the frame of the bike, which is very sturdy. After that, you build the compact 2-speed gearbox, and all the axles will fit perfectly into all the pinholes of the connectors. Then comes the V4 engine, which sits directly on top of the gearbox. It is connected to the gearbox via a rubber band, as there isn't enough space to fit gears there. A second rubber band is used to ensure that the gears always snap into place correctly. After that, you build the swingarm and rear suspension, followed by the front suspension, before attaching all the panels that will finish the look of the bike. The windshield is a flexible piece secured to the dash with a pair of Lego System katana pieces! It's an interesting design choice, but it's quite flimsy and inferior to the solid windshield piece used in the Kawasaki Ninja, this set's successor.

Once completed, the bike's functions can be easily played with by rolling it on a table. In neutral, the rear wheel will not drive the engine, but shifting into either gear will make the pistons move as you roll the bike. The two gears have different gear ratios, which move the pistons at different speeds. The rear suspension can be a bit wobbly due to the single swingarm. Unfortunately, this issue can't really be fixed without making the entire bike much larger. Older Technic bikes used a double-sided swingarm to make the rear suspension more stable, but this can't be done on the Ducati, since the real bike uses a single swingarm as well. The paddock stand is also not very sturdy, and the bike can be tipped over with minimal force while sitting on it, but it will hold the bike in place provided you don't mess with it.

For a medium-sized set, this bike provides you with a lot of new and unique parts, such as the new fat rear tire, new shock absorbers, and large discs representing the front brakes of the bike. This bike looks superb standing next to the 1:8 Technic supercars, being built on roughly the same scale. It's not a true scale model, however, as some parts of the real bike, such as the front fender, are completely missing in this set, and its proportions aren't quite right. Due to the large size of the engine and transmission pieces, the Lego bike is proportionally a bit too wide when compared to the real thing.

At $80, this set isn't cheap when you look at its price per piece ratio, but consider that the newly released large Ducati is $200, and for 250% of the price of this set you don't get any more functions! Sure, you get more detail, such as an actual front fender, more accurate body proportions, and one extra gear, but is that worth the extra money? Unless you're a huge motorcycle enthusiast, I find it hard to justify such a large price difference when the $80 set has nearly the same functions. Furthermore, the new line of large Technic bikes are simply too big to fit with anything else Technic makes, making them unsuitable for play alongside other Technic vehicles, but that's my personal opinion. If you desire more accurate details, you'd probably find the large bikes more appealing. For me, this set gets 5 stars for the ingenious packaging of its functions.

How many functions one relatively small technic motorcycle can have. All of them ! That real motorcycle would have

Building/Parts:

The building process is very well-thought-out you start from the frame and build fake moving engine and gearbox to that frame and add rest of motorcycle to it. Yes you heard it right it has working 4 piston engine and 3 gear gearbox (2 speeds and neutral). In such a small body its truly well-thought-out build.

There is some interesting buildings techniques used that were new to me and this is first motorcycle for me, so I had lots of parts specific to motorcycles that I have never had before.

There are two pieces of katanas that you always eye and quite can't figure out how am I supposed to use in the build.

Aesthetics

I love the colour scheme, and it's quite similar to real Ducati, It's a very nice for displaying. Some of its panels are quite easy to remove, so you can have potentially 2 display modes, Naked and Regular.

Playability

I think its quite playable model its easy to handle and is not too weak expect some panel pieces.

Value for money:

I think this is very good set for the money. It has everything a motorcycle would have and considering it's also a licenced set in my opinion its worth every penny.

Overall

While I am not big Motorcycle fan in real life I absolutely loved to build one and seeing myself to get some other bikes to compliment this one. I will recommend this bike for everyone who are technic fans or Motorcycle fans. 5 out of 5

I've been a LEGO fan since I was a little kid, but not until the last few years I put my interest in the Technic motorcycles, and being a biker myself, I became a Technic motorcycles collector. The Ducati Panigale is my 17th in overall and 10th large-scale motorcycle model. It's the biggest motorcycle model so far, with 646 pieces it surpasses the 42063 BMW R1200 GS model by 43 bricks. In the box there were several standard LEGO plastic bags containing bricks, as well as a thick manual and a sticker sheet.

The model took me approximately 4 hours to build. Starting from the engine, by the frame, rear swing arm, ending with suspended wheels and fairings. The build was the most demanding of all I did, but not very hard. The info on the box states that it's a 10+ years model, however a typical 10-year old might have a problem cause at few steps, joining the model modules can be tricky and challenging, as well as it may require strong fingers. Nevetheless, the building process was very satysfying.

The model itself has a lot in interesting details, among which the best one is a 2-step gearbox with a neutral gear. The way of changing gears is exactly the same as in real motorcycles, from down to up we have 1-neutral-2 gear. And here's the first flaw of the model, when on the 1st gear, the sprockets interact very roughly and there isn't other way to change this than dissasembling the whole motorcycle chassis and engine cover which would be too time-consuming. Things get much better at gear 2, and on neutral the wheels run very smoothly - naturally because no sprockets are turning. The second and biggest to me flaw, is the lack of kickstand. In every other motorcycle there is one, while here the motorcycle stands on a typical rear paddock stand, which is very unstable and you need to turn the handlebar maximum to the left, otherwise it may fall over. It's not like with real motorcycle where you lift the rear wheel on the stand and the handlebar is straight. The model would've been much better with the kickstand.

Nevertheless, the model is a great set to build. It looks astonishing among other sets on the shelf. A true beauty. I hope LEGO will continue making motorcycle replicas, as they are really great, especially for a die-hard motorcycle fan like me.

Lego has produced 39 Technic motorcycles in 41 years (35 if you exclude Robo Riders), and the Ducati Panigale is one of the best. It's also one of the most expensive, but the numerous exclusive elements and compact design justify that price.

Just like the real bike, Lego's rendition of the Penigale is beautiful. The front-wheel shock absorbers work flawlessly- and along with the new break disks- make the likeness to the real machine that much better. If there's one thing that detracts from accuracy, it's the large gap in the side fairings. Fully covering the sides would make the gear-shifting function impossible, but a couple short beams or system pieces could have covered some of that gap. Still, seeing some frame has a very Technic charm. The windshield is creatively formed with a thin vinyl piece skewered on two katanas.

While the Panigale's steering and suspension are functions shared by many Technic motorcycles of releases past, the true star of the show is this bike's three gears (first, neutral, and second). The gearbox fits into the frame nicely- all the space is utilized, and the end result is unlike any motorcycle Lego has produced. Changing gears has a noticeable effect on the speed of the pistons when the Panigale moves. Unfortunately, the four working pistons are largely obscured by the fairings, so although the two piston-moving speeds of the Panigale do exist, this functionality can be hard to get a visual of. This wouldn't be a problem if the upper side fairings covering the motor were easy to remove, but they're not.

Outside my nitpicking with the set's design, a couple of quality control issues reared their ugly heads while building. The single red pin/crank liftarm along with eight red axle and pin connectors (hub with 1 axle) came from a batch of plastic the color of which was noticeably darker than the rest of the set's red elements. Although none of these pieces are big enough to disrupt the visual cleanliness of the final product, it is a factory error I hope The Lego Group fixes. A much worse error appeared in the form of a black double-bent liftarm which had become a triple-bent liftarm due to an apparent molding mistake. It's unlike anything I've personally experienced.

All said and built, the Ducati Panigale is a good set both aesthetically and functionally, and the minor problems barely hinder what is an impressive model. The build felt rewarding, and seeing it all come together was an overall great experience.

Five years ago I ended my review of 42036, the previous Technic road bike, with:

I'm already looking forward to 2020 for the next Technic road bike...

Well, here it is! 8420 in 2005, 8051 in 2010, 42036 in 2015... there's certainly a pattern. 8051 was the odd one out with a straight 3-cylinder engine, the others were V4 engines and so is this Ducati.

Parts

Of course you'll find a bunch of black and grey beams to create the frame and some red panels for the bodywork but there are some more interesting parts in this set.

Straight away you'll notice a new brake disc that, for now at least, is unique to this set. As it's modeled after the Ducati brake disc I'm not sure it will be used in other sets. For the rear brake it's using the same part that the Bugatti and Lamborghini use, only it's light grey here.

The rear tyre is new, and while it's wider than the front tyre Lego calls it 'TYRE NARROW, DIA. 94.3, NO. 1', probably because it's not as wide as the rear tyre on the Harley.

A great new part is the shock absorber for the front forks. Since 1991's Shock Cycle most of the bigger Technic motorbikes have used the same shock absorber element with the exposed springs. They work, but don't look very realistic. The new element, in pearl gold here, looks like a modern upside-down front fork. It certainly feels more stable than the old part.

The last part to highlight is the windscreen. Not a traditional windscreen part but a soft transparent plastic sheet.

Building

I was expecting a page or two about the prototype at the start of the instruction booklet like some other licensed set have. The Lambo has 27 pages! Not so here. One photo of the real bike at the back of the book, that's it. So let's get started.

It's an interesting model to build. Like most Technic bikes there are angles everywhere. You start by building the frame. Then the gearbox goes in, followed by the V4 engine. At one point there's something I hadn't come across before: a QR code that links to a video on the Lego.com website, showing how the gears should be operating at that point.

Next the swing arm goes on, followed by the front forks, but no chain or rear wheel yet. Instead the next step starts the bodywork. With the box showing that the body panels can be removed from the completed model that's a bit strange. I would recommend after step 130 skipping to step 168, put on the rear wheel and build the stand. After step 183 you have the bike with two wheels sitting on the stand and that point you can go back to 131 and start putting on bodywork.

The completed model

Let's first look at the aesthetics. Does it look like a Ducati Panigale? Yes it does. Is it close to a scale model? Err... no. There's a few things wrong. While the designers have done a pretty good job, the fairing at the front is too high and the bodywork too wide.

The position of the rear shock is mostly ok but the asymmetric mud guard looks strange. At the front the mudguard is missing altogether. Still, it's a good-looking modern racing bike.

Now let's look at the technical side. It's impressive to squeeze a gearbox into the available space so let's not complain about it only having two gears. Lever down for first gear and up for second gear is correct for most motorbikes, but racing bikes tend to have the gears upside down. Also, unlike cars, the gear lever on a motorbike comes back to the centre position.

While the gearbox is nicely engineered, unfortunately there apparently wasn't room for a gear connection between the crankshaft and gearbox, so a rubber band is used instead. On a real engine that would be gears or a chain. Rubber bands or belts are only used for timing belts. Ironically it's Ducati of all brands that is known for using gears instead of belts for a more precise connection.

The last thing I want to mention is the stand. This is the racing version of the Panigale so it doesn't have centre stand or kick stand. Instead it comes with a paddock stand, like you'll see in various publicity shots. The way the bike sits on the stand is a little awkward but it's hard to see a better way. The real strange thing though is that while on the stand the rear wheel can't spin, so you can't play with/ show off the gears while on display.

Final verdict

It's a good-looking model of a motorbike with some nice new parts. Technically it's not perfect, but it's the first Technic motorbike with working gears. The price is reasonable; price per part is similar to the last few large Technic bikes.

So is the Ducati partnership worth it? Probably not. At the size/ scale of cars like the Porsche, Bugatti and Lamborghini you can create a very good model without compromising on the technical details. I feel that at the size of these bikes you would get a better model by focusing on the technical side and basing the looks on a generic motorbike rather than a specific prototype.