Ducati built the biggest V4 of its era for America — the tires quit, then the money did

In 1961 Joe Berliner, whose Berliner Motor Corporation was Ducati's US importer, pushed the state-controlled Italian firm to build a big machine aimed at Harley-Davidson's home ground: the US police contracts and the big-twin market. Berliner asked for an engine bigger than anything in Harley's range. Ducati answered with the Apollo — a 1,257 cc air-cooled 90-degree V4, the largest engine it had ever built, making 100 bhp.

The bike outran its own tires. Test rubber disintegrated at speed on the Autostrada, and specially made tires could not survive the power. Ducati detuned the Apollo to 80 bhp, then to 65 by late 1963 — at which point it was slower than the British twins and BMWs it had been built to beat. Two prototypes and two spare engines were all that ever existed; the gold prototype was handed over in a ceremony in March 1964, and the machine was shown at Earls Court that November.

Production never began. The Italian government judged the market too small to justify the tooling costs and withdrew its funding; Berliner's underwriting could not fill the gap. Four years of development ended quietly in late 1964 — Ducati's boldest postwar product bid vanished without a single customer machine. The company stayed fragile enough to need a rescue two decades later; the US big-bike market of the 1960s simply happened without it.