Stuff Digital Edition

SAM McCAFFERTY

Ducati designer

By Ben Strang

‘‘If you’re [riding] it in Wellington, make sure it’s not a windy day. I know what that’s like, and it’s no fun.’’

In a quiet room not far from the factory floor, five designers are chatting in their best Italian, pointing their graphitesmudged fingertips at drawings of motorcycles.

They’re admiring the subtle design, the flowing lines, everything that makes them a Ducati.

One of the men turns to his colleague, and asks in admiration: ‘‘So when are you making us the next Britten?’’

He’s talking to Sam McCafferty, a 29-yearold Wellingtonian who has landed one of the best design gigs in the world of motorbikes, and has just led his first project as lead designer of the Ducati Streetfighter V2.

‘‘As a New Zealander, it’s always the Britten,’’ McCafferty says of the V1000 motorcycle, designed by the late Kiwi mechanical engineer John Britten.

It’s one of McCafferty’s major design influences. ‘‘You know, the V1000, it gets brought up to me here all the time. It’s a pretty big shadow to live under, to be honest.

‘‘That’s the pinnacle. It is the pinnacle of motorbike design, it’s always so well regarded. I’m not sure they can expect that from me, but hopefully one day I’ll get close.’’

McCafferty moved to Bologna to join Ducati nearly five years ago.

Growing up, it was cars and their design that got McCafferty excited. His dad loved cars, and they even named the family dog Enzo, after the founder of Ferrari.

Motorcycles were cool, McCafferty says, but the furthest thing from his mind when he was riding a push bike around the streets of Eastbourne, a suburb of Lower Hutt.

After attending Hutt Valley High School, the then 17-year-old moved to Auckland to attend Massey University, with a focus on industrial design.

In his second year he moved back to Wellington, still studying at Massey, when an opportunity came along that he couldn’t pass up.

Honda was effectively sponsoring a design course for fourth-year students, and McCafferty wanted in. ‘‘I managed to get Massey to let me in, which was nice of them,’’ McCafferty says. ‘‘The winner of that paper got an internship with Honda R&D Europe in Rome, so I pushed really, really hard on that project.

‘‘I drove to Auckland once a week to do it. I was living in Wellington and working in Wellington as well, but I really wanted the internship and I really wanted to learn from the guy from Honda.’’

McCafferty went on to win the internship, despite being a second-year student, and then spent nine months with the company’s motorcycle arm in Italy.

After the internship he returned to Massey, and then had an 18-month stint with a company in San Diego. When his visa expired and he returned to New Zealand, McCafferty caught the eye of Ducati, thanks to drawings he’d posted on his Instagram page.

‘‘I remember it. I actually got added on LinkedIn by my now boss, and I saw it at like four in the morning because I was jet-lagged after returning from America.

‘‘I accepted it, and then he asked me if he could call me straight away. So I took a call from him at about 4.30am, I had to shake the sleep out of my eyes. But he asked if I was free, and could I come here for an interview.

‘‘I was like, I’m in New Zealand. And he said, that’s fine, just send me the flights and I’ll see what I can do. So I gave him a few options, one the next day, one in five days’ time, and he told me to get on a flight the next day.’’

Two days after the initial call, McCafferty was in Bologna and about to accept a job as a designer for Ducati. Now he’s part of a team of five, plus the head designer, who come up with Ducati’s offering of motorcycles.

Typically, the designers all pitch their ideas for upcoming bikes, and the company’s chief executive, Claudio Domenicali, along with the design lead, pick their ideas to pieces before choosing one to go ahead with. The winner becomes the lead designer of that bike.

In his case, McCafferty was hand-picked to lead the design of the new Streetfighter V2, which will come out early in 2022.

While the Britten is frequently mentioned in the Ducati offices, McCafferty says the company has certain design philosophies, and he tried to take inspiration from two particular Ducati classics with his Streetfighter V2 design. One was the Ducati 916, designed in the early 1990s, the other the 1199 Panigale, which debuted in 2011.

The Streetfighter V4, which was brought out in the past year, has a more brutal shape, and appears like a beast of a bike, he says.

‘‘The idea was to try and create something that has what we call the family feeling of the range, but I was using a fuel tank from the Panigale, which is a lot softer style of design. I used that to create a bike that’s more flowing, a bit softer, a bit more elegant and agilelooking.’’

It’s an aggressive yet elegant design, with flowing diagonal lines from front to back, and a striking red paint job to help it stand out.

The process of taking the design from a series of drawings into a full, functioning motorcycle is long, but extremely satisfying for McCafferty. He says the designs are first turned into a

3D computer simulation, and are then tweaked slightly. A life-size clay model is then made and the design is perfected, with test riders sitting on what is essentially a sculpture and explaining what works and what doesn’t.

Once it’s finalised, the clay sculpture is 3D mapped and put back into the computer, and then prototypes are put together for testing on the track.

Further tweaks are made after feedback from test riders. ‘‘For example, the swingarm, which is the part holding the rear wheel at the back of the bike, on the Streetfighter, it’s 16mm longer to aid with stability and driveability.

‘‘As a designer you get those reports every week, and they’ll ask things like, we need to lengthen the swingarm by a couple of millimetres. And then we need a two or three millimetres more.

‘‘So while people won’t notice the difference with, say, the Panigale at a glance, I had to work with the engineers to find that extra

16mm at the back there. These testers can feel the millimetres in these bikes, so it’s really cool to read their feedback.’’

While the bike is ready for release on to the market, McCafferty is yet to test ride his own creation. That will have to wait until he secures an Italian motorcycle licence.

At the moment he walks or cycles the 10 minutes to work, as his New Zealand and American driver licences are no longer recognised by the Italian authorities.

‘‘[Ducati] are really good at giving you bikes, but unfortunately right now I can’t ride on my New Zealand licence. I’ve got to sit my Italian licence, but the problem is it’s all in Italian. I could probably do it, but it’s like €1000

[NZ$1600], and I’m not sure if I want to try that out until I’m really sure.’’

It could be that other Kiwis get the chance to ride the Streetfighter V2 before its designer, but McCafferty had some advice for this reporter, or any others wanting to take the newest Ducati for a test drive.

‘‘If you’re doing it in Wellington, make sure it’s not a windy day. I know what that’s like, and it’s no fun. You’ll enjoy it more without the wind.’’

National Portrait

en-nz

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282003265709447

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