Ducati Let California’s Paperwork Leak a New 2027 Diavel V4 Trim Before It Was Ready ToBackfire NewsJohn LloydTue, September 22, 2026 at 4:00 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleDucati Let California’s Paperwork Leak a New 2027 Diavel V4 Trim Before It Was Ready ToDucati hasn't teased it. There's no shadow-camo photo, no silhouette countdown page, no cryptic Instagram post. Instead, the newest addition to the Diavel V4 family surfaced the least glamorous way possible: as a single new line item buried in a California emissions filing.The California Air Resources Board requires every automaker to certify each new engine family and model variant before it can legally be sold in the state, a formality that has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with tailpipe chemistry. Ducati filed its 2027 model-year Diavel V4 certification back in March, listing three variants: the standard Diavel V4, the Diavel for Bentley, and the limited-run Bentley Mulliner edition. On August 26, CARB signed a revised executive order for that same filing. The only change was a fourth name added to the list: Diavel V4 S.No photos. No spec sheet. No press release. Just a badge, buried in a document meant for regulators, not riders.Why the "S" Actually Ranks Below the "RS"Here's where it gets confusing if you don't already speak Ducati. The current Diavel V4 lineup tops out with the Diavel V4 RS, a 182-horsepower, 485-pound halo cruiser starting at $39,995. The standard Diavel V4 makes do with 168 horsepower, 93 lb-ft of torque and a considerably friendlier $27,995 starting price. Slot an "S" in between those two letters and it's tempting to assume Ducati just built something hotter than the RS. It hasn't. Across the rest of the current lineup, including the Multistrada V4 S, the Panigale V4 S and the Streetfighter V4 S, the S badge has never meant more power. It means Öhlins.AdvertisementAdvertisementSpecifically, it means the Öhlins Smart EC 2.0 electronic suspension that Ducati markets as Ducati Skyhook Suspension. Instead of a rider setting compression and rebound damping with a screwdriver and a guess, the system reads wheel speed, throttle position, brake pressure and lean angle dozens of times a second and adjusts the fork and shock accordingly, without the rider ever touching a clicker. It's the difference between a suspension that's set up correctly for one kind of riding and one that's constantly re-guessing itself for whatever you're actually doing right now, whether that's a two-up highway cruise or an aggressive backroad blast ten minutes later.That makes a Diavel V4 S a logical middle child, not a flagship challenger. The base Diavel V4 already runs a fully adjustable 50mm fork and a fully adjustable monoshock, so bolting on electronically controlled damping is a believable, incremental upgrade for a trim that slots under the RS rather than over it.Don't Expect a New EngineThe powertrain is the least interesting part of this story, and that's by design. The current Diavel V4 uses Ducati's 1,158cc Granturismo V4, an engine architecture Ducati has already spread across the Multistrada, the standard XDiavel V4 and now, presumably, whatever wears the S badge. Homologating an entirely new engine family with the EPA and CARB is a slow, expensive process measured in months and real money. Recycling an engine that's already certified is how a manufacturer adds a new trim level without adding a new certification headache. If the Diavel V4 S arrives with the same 1,158cc four-cylinder under its tank cover, that's not a lack of ambition. It's just good business.The bodywork is a different matter. Design registrations for a reworked Diavel surfaced in Europe back in December, months before this CARB paperwork turned up, pointing to updated radiator shrouds, a revised air intake, new wheels and a different exhaust. Design offices and emissions regulators tend to catch different pieces of a new model at different stages of development. Taken together, the timeline suggests Ducati locked in the styling well before the compliance paperwork caught up with it.AdvertisementAdvertisementIt also isn't the only time this year Ducati's own filings have said more than its marketing department intended. Regulatory and design paperwork outed the new Monster months before anyone in Bologna said a word about it, and the Diavel V4 S is following an identical script: quiet bureaucracy first, official reveal later, likely timed to Ducati's annual World Première season, when the brand traditionally unveils its next model-year lineup in full.The CARB filing is also a reminder of how much weight the Diavel nameplate now carries for Ducati. The same document groups two separate Bentley-branded editions alongside the standard bike, underscoring how the Diavel V4 platform has quietly become Ducati's preferred canvas for limited, co-branded halo bikes, a role the original Diavel, launched well over a decade ago as a comparatively simple power cruiser, was never built for.What This Means If You're Actually ShoppingIf you're cross-shopping the Diavel V4 range once the S officially exists, don't expect it to out-accelerate the RS or undercut the standard bike on price. Expect it to land in the gap between $27,995 and $39,995, and expect the sales pitch to be ride quality and adjustability rather than a bigger horsepower number. Insurance and maintenance costs should track closely with the standard V4 too, since a shared engine family means shared parts pricing and a similar risk profile for underwriters. The electronic suspension hardware is really the only meaningfully more expensive component to service if it ever needs attention out of warranty.It's also a good excuse to remember that the power-cruiser world doesn't only look like electronically massaged Italian V4s chasing lean-angle telemetry. Boss Hoss still builds a cruiser around a 600-horsepower big-block Chevy V8, just to prove that raw displacement never really went out of style. Ducati's approach to a cruiser and Boss Hoss's approach to a cruiser have almost nothing in common except two wheels, which is exactly why the category stays interesting.AdvertisementAdvertisementNone of this is official. Ducati could still change the name, cancel the trim, or reveal something the paperwork never hinted at. But a signed CARB executive order isn't a rumor or a spy shot. It's a legal document a real automaker filed with a real government agency to sell a real motorcycle in the largest new-vehicle market in the country. Whatever Ducati ends up calling its press conference, the Diavel V4 S already exists on paper. Everyone else is just waiting for Ducati to catch up to its own filing cabinet.Your Turn: Which Diavel V4 trim would you actually ride home? Let us know in the comments.
