The world may still be largely staying at home but that didn’t stop Ducati from running its third annual Custom Rumble competition, which invited amateur and professional bike builders from around the world to submit their modified Scramblers to be judged by the public, to decide the top five, before the overall winner was decided by a VIP judging panel.

The panel included factory Ducati racers Andrea Dovizioso and Chaz Davies, actor Nicholas Noult, Bike Shed London founder Dutch van Someren and Italian custom bike builder Filippo Barbacane. With most of the world still in ‘lockdown’ due to COVID-19, the judging was carried out remotely and streamed via Ducati’s Facebook page – where 16,000 fans watched live.

The winner was the Scrambler 1100FT built by Italy’s Marco Graziani of CC Racing Garage, who wins a top end Beta tool kit and workbench, as well as the bragging rights.

The Custom Rumble was open to builders using any model from the Ducati Scrambler range as its base. The builds were split into five categories, with the winner for each category going to the judging panel. The five categories were:

• Rocker: motorbikes inspired by the 1960s café racers coveted by rocker culture
• Cut Down: Scramblers built in the cut-down ‘bobber’ style
• All-terrain: an off-road/enduro style custom build
• Outsider: a kind of catch-all category for ‘outsiders’ who don’t fit into any of the previous categories
• Bully: an unrestricted class reserved exclusively for the Scrambler 1100

Marco’s project received more public votes than any other 73 machines entered and won the Bully class, making it a fitting winner of the overall award. The machine itself was relatively standard but received some subtle but well executed modifications, including the hand made exhaust and seat unit, however the headlight and fuel tank were kept largely standard, as Marco felt that these were integral parts of the Scrambler DNA.

The big wow is, of course, the custom paint job, with the pinging blue and silver livery evoking memories of Ducati’s 1970s race bikes. The special also gets some fancy Ohlins suspension and Brembo brakes, and although it’s a one-off custom motorcycle, stick some indicators, a number plate and a quiet exhaust on it and you could easily see it sitting on a podium in a Ducati showroom.

The competition was set to coincide with this year’s Bike Shed Show, which was due to take place in London in May, and hopefully we will get the chance to see it in the metal some time in the future.