I am going to chime in here because assuming FastDoc reached the same conclusions, I tried an awful lot of roadbikes/Dual P bikes, Touring Bikes, and Std. Bikes -Lots of em good, some not so good, but once you fire up a Ducati and take a little spin, it immediately hits you that there is something different. The initial impression of mine was quite startling.
There are faster, simpler, longer legged, or cheaper/more expensive bikes out there, but darned if the Duc's don't seem so "right" from the get go.
For myself, I attribute it to the Italian's "soul" as it were. Engineering-function-form,beauty and passion, equals ART. If you've never ridden one, try one at least once in your life.
And not just the road bikes, I recently read a comparo piece on the new range of scrambler type bikes. The editors were sooo surprised that the Ducati entry was clearly the best, even over the spectacular Triumph entry, and They pretty much invented the genre