2006 World's Most Beautiful Motorcycle Award

The Ducati 999R Xerox and the Ducati Hypermotard were recently honored with the "The World's Most Beautiful Motorcycle" award and several other motorcycles were also honored for their design.

An international panel of judges for the “World’s Most Beautiful Motorcycle” awards met on the last Friday in April, 2006 at Cortile della Seta in Milano, a historic courtyard made available by Banca Popolare Commercio e Industria.

The judges included the artists Heinz Mack, Vittorio Matino and Kenneth Noland, 15 time motorcycle world champion, Giacomo Agostini, the design professor Enrico Fagone, the transportation designer Michael Conrad, the fashion designer Carlo Rivetti, and the journalist Alessandro Giudice.  The jury was chaired by Mr. Bruno Alfieri.

The 26 jurors examined and evaluated motorcycle and scooter models and defined the top aesthetic achievements of 15 European, Japanese and American manufacturers.

After a careful examination, the Jury presented two of the awards to Ducati models.  The award in the “Special Series” category went to the Ducati 999R Xerox and the award for the “Best Prototype” went to the Ducati Hypermotard.

Additional awards went to the MV Agusta F41000 Senna in the street bike category, the Kawasaki ER-6n in the naked category, the Husqvarna TE510 Centennial in the off-road category and the Aprilia Scarabeo 500 in the Scooter category. In addition, the MV Agusta Brutale R and the Harley-Davidson VRXSE Screamin’ Eagle V-Rod Destroyer received special prizes.  The prize-awarding ceremony will take place late May.

The awards mark a further extension of Automobilia’s promotional activities, which began in 1993 with prizes assigned to cars, with a view to enhancing and promoting the artistic value of all “design-in-motion” products.

As claimed by Ettore Bugatti one century ago and achieved by the greatest car, truck and train body designers and bike designers in the world, the focus of the awards is centered on the roles played by “shape” and “function”.

The aim is not to confine artistic creation to the secondary role of fashion styling and marketing design, but to confirm and enhance the social and cultural mission of industrial products in a society that should ideally become closer to the Aristotelian idea of beauty.