Much like Harley-Davidson and Moto Guzzi, Ducati is associated with a single engine design—its signature 90 degree “L-twin.” Save for the V-four-powered MotoGP racebikes, it’s been since the ultra-rare, race-only Supermono single was discontinued in 1995 that the Italian firm has produced anything other than desmodromic-valved V-twins. But this wasn’t always the case. For the three decades prior to 1985, the year Cagiva bought Ducati and decided to focus almost exclusively on the V-twin layout, the company also produced a variety of singles and parallel twins, while the testing department experimented with a wild diversity of engine configurations and designs—most of which have been lost to history and not even displayed in Ducati’s factory museum.
Read more: http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/features/122_1306_abandoned_ducati_prototype_engines/viewall.html#ixzz2TqxAqZLJ
Some of the cool motors on display inside the Ducati Corse entrance atrium