• Believed to have raced in World Championship events
• Purchased for the Morbidelli Museum in the early 1990s
• Rebuilt in the Morbidelli Museum's workshop

Its senior management having decided that racing success was the best way to promote the fledgling manufacturer, Ducati recruited engineer Fabio Taglioni, formerly with Ceccato and Mondial, to oversee its racing and development programmes. Commencing work in May 1954, Taglioni designed the first of Ducati's now legendary sporting singles: the 98cc Gran Sport, nicknamed 'Marianna', which made its racetrack debut in 1955. The Gran Sport's overhead cam was driven by a vertical shaft and bevel gears, and this method was carried over to Ducati's 125cc twin-cam (bialbero) and triple-cam (trialbero) racers, the latter featuring Taglioni's famous 'desmodromic' method of valve actuation that dispensed with springs.

The first significant development of Taglioni's original design arrived early in 1956 in the form of a massive twin-cam (bialbero) cylinder head, which retained the exposed hairpin valve springs of the single-cam motor. Producing 16bhp, almost double the output of the 98cc Gran Sport, this new engine went into cycle parts that were essentially unchanged apart from the adoption of a more powerful double-sided front brake, a move necessitated by the bialbero's greatly increased speed. Campaigned by the factory on a limited basis and offered for sale to privateers, the bialbero was merely a stepping stone on the way to Taglioni's final refinement of his original single-cylinder design – the desmodromic trialbero – which made its spectacularly successful race debut at the Swedish Grand Prix in July 1956 when works rider Degli Antoni lapped the entire field on his way to victory.

Antoni's untimely death in August 1956 was a major setback for Ducati's plans, and it would be 1958 before they mounted another serious challenge at World Championship level. Having hitherto relied on single-cylinder designs for the 125 class, Ducati introduced a 125 twin at Monza in 1958, the final round of that year's World Championship. Although the Ducati 125s proved capable of winning Grands Prix (three in 1958 and one in 1959, all by trialbero singles), they lacked the consistency to challenge the dominant MVs for World Championship honours. And when the Japanese manufacturers arrived en masse in the early 1960s, bringing multi-cylinder technology to the lightweight classes, the writing seemed well and truly on the wall for the European opposition.

This Ducati bialbero 125 dates from 1956 and is believed to have raced in World Championship events. The machine was purchased for the Morbidelli Museum in the early 1990s and has been restored by Giancarlo Morbidelli.