Ducati has announced that its Ducati V4 superbike has miraculously gone from making a mere 210 horsepower (hp) to an astounding 368, overnight – dealing a devastating blow to competitors like BMW and Honda who have worked hard to surpass the 200hp+ mark.
“It’s true,” said Claudio Domenicali, Ducati CEO. “Ducati has once again taken its rightful place alone, at the top of the spec sheets… just don’t look too closely at the details.”
It appears the Italian manufacturer accomplished this feat by turning to its Evaluations, Goals, and Optics (E.G.O.) division, which decided it was time to abandon ‘horsepower’ (hp) for a more made-up measurement that will all but guarantee they win the war… on paper: Ponypower (pp).
“You never hear a child at a birthday party in the movies ask for a horse for their birthday. It’s always a pony, no?,” said Bernito Motolini, president of the E.G.O. division. “A pony unlocks the dreaming child within each of us and you can’t put a price on that. Also, we calculated based on zero calculations that a horse makes the same power as roughly 1.75 ponies. So this gives us a real boost… on paper.”
This isn’t the first time Ducati has pulled something as big as this pp out of its rear end, either.
“We first mastered this technique with ‘Dry Weight,’” Benito said. “We take a measurement that the entire world uses and understands and we bastardize it until it works in our favor… on paper. It’s like weighing a person, except you remove all the water in the person’s body, leaving just 40% of the person as a shriveled-up, non-functioning, shell of itself. But, on paper, that person has lost a lot of weight, which is good, no?”
Some critics say this move is nothing more than another example of Ducati being insecure about its size.
“I want to be clear when I say this is absolutely not a willy-waving competition, mainly because for it to even be considered a competition, you need more pps to compare yours to. As far as I can tell, we’re the only ones with a huge pp on display. So no competition. We win… on paper.”