Some Very Brave People Built A 900cc Ducati-Powered Go Kart

Everyone should drive a go-kart at some point. They’re about as pure and fun as driving can get, and can even teach a fair amount about car control without ever feeling unapproachable for a total novice. Unless that is, they have a 900cc Ducati superbike engine sitting next to the driver.

That’s exactly what’s been created by YouTube channel CarsandCameras, a band of people who, we have to presume, have slightly less intrusive instincts for self-preservation than the rest of us. It’s a channel that specialises in tooling around on absolutely mad machines like this.

The Ducati-powered kart first cropped up around six years ago, but it’s recently been revived, because why the heck not? The engine is a 904cc air-cooled V-twin from a 1990s Ducati 900SS sports bike – not quite the fastest bike the Italian manufacturer was making at the time, but with around 80bhp, it’s still got something like 12 times the power of the sort of kart you might drive at your local indoor track.

Combine that with something that’s little more than a metal frame with some teeny racing slick tyres, and the results are… profound. The CarsandCameras team took it out to the GPS660 drag race in Dallas, Texas, an event usually reserved for equally berserk modified mini-bikes with engines of up to 290cc.

They evidently had a waiver to run the 900cc ‘Ducarti’ there, because we get to see it line up against a bike at the beginning of the 660-foot drag strip (right after a similar bike takes on a BMW M3 – sadly, we don’t get to see the result of this peculiar matchup).

The result of that alarming power-to-weight ratio with sticky tyres and an even stickier drag strip is one of the sketchiest wheelies we’ve ever seen. We won’t spoil the race result – this is the kind of ridiculous machine you really need to see for yourself.