Steve Jones’ Ducati

Steve Jones’ Ducati

EXCLUSIVE—If you live in L.A., you’ll probably remember Steve Jones from his Indie 103.1 radio show, Jonesy’s Jukebox. If you live elsewhere, you’ll know him best as guitarist and founding member of the Sex Pistols. These days, however, Jonesy’s big passion is motorcycles—and this trick Hypermotard is his personal ride.

It was customized by David Bingham, one of the top Ducati specialists on the west coast of the USA. According to David, “It came in looking like it’d had a few well-intentioned bolt-ons installed. But all from different sources, and with anodizing that was in various shades and states of fade. Most of what I did was cosmetic since it’s a daily driver—and the Hypermotard 1100 has enough power for that use as is.” With 90hp propelling only 177kg (390 lbs), Jonesy’s Hypermotard has enough power to terrorize the LA canyons, but now looks like Something Else.

Bingham cut the sub-frame apart and shortened it, and cleaned up any visible brackets. “I welded a mount on the rear to hold a 1098 tail light—with integrated turn signals—and to mount the license plate. The front signals are based on Ducati Performance units from a M1100 that came broken in the package. I used epoxy to glue them into the little air vents: they’re very visible when on, and invisible when off.”

The seat is a hand made one-off by design house Chrome Hearts. The exhaust was created from thin-walled stainless tube, with a low-mounted 2-into-1. “Steve’s vision was a very short exhaust can. I found one through Two Brothers and made up a second mid-pipe to install it. He also has a Leo Vince in his garage and can switch to that in a few minutes.”

Bingham stripped down the forks and individually coated them with an industrial ceramic coating developed for military firearms. “The color I choose was ‘Sniper Grey’ to contrast the other black parts. Other parts done in Cermacoat were the inside covers of the Speedy Moto belt covers, the clutch pressure plate, and clutch cover.” Bingham also powdercoated the engine side covers in low gloss black, then ripped the Öhlins shock apart: he powdercoated the body in low gloss black, and the spring in gloss black. Even the wheels are powdercoated (to eliminate the red stripe), but the body panels are painted conventionally.

“There were a few other small bits that had to be made, like the dash mount and some micro relay blocks to run the signals. And the head light: it’s a Baja Designs 8” Soltek race light. These only come with one-beam type bulbs, and an offroad-only beam pattern. So I found a different 8” lens through PIAA that was for a rally light that uses an H4 bulb.“

Jones’ Ducati is now a dark and edgy custom, with usable performance and literally zero bling. The stock Hypermotard doesn’t quite do it for me, but this version certainly does.

Good to see this rocker hasn’t faded away.

[Many thanks to LA photographer Scott Nathan for the images and the tip. See more of Scott's photography on his Facebook page—after you've joined ours, of course.]

Canon EOS 5D | 1/100 sec | f/3 | ISO 100 | Focal length 70mm