So its should be theoretically possible, even today, to walk into a dealer and order ,say, a bike with an aircooled engine,red frame and tank,black wheels,mid range suspension weighted to me personally,specified brake componants, specified footpeg arrangements and other special parts, rather than accept the narrower range put out by most manufacturers.
Is this the future? or too complex for for any motorcycle marque to support, after all isn't this what most car dealers do.
Some of that is do-able Dave but it depends upon your distribution model and available assembly locations. In cycling we can cope with it for our Uk distribution but it gets harder as we go to export, it all depends upon how long a customer will wait and whether you can bulk your finished product to save on shipping costs and the customer accepts that. We don't have as deep a relationship with our suppliers and few are UK sourced (hardly anything left here) which further complicates the business model but you find ways around these problems but it does require work. the car industry do it well but that comes down to the huge investment in JIT and the supplier relationship.
i think colour/engine spec and basic choices in exhaust/suspension should be possible, whether you can get that down to tuned for weight I doubt very much as the goal would be to bring a shock in already assembled, having to strip shocks and change springs or build every shock isn't cost effective unless you have a suspension company next door which Ducati did have in marzocchi but they now use Showa???.
To give you an idea of what can be achieved (in cycling terms) pop over to our
website tomorrow when the 09 range goes live, pick a model like the Five S and start dropping the option boxes down, you can see from that how much customisation we're doing, I wouldn't claim its anywhere near efficient manufacturing or follows JIT principles but what we are finding is that customers like being able to pick what they want and dealers like being able to sell using this system.
Footpeg position choice and seat position choice was a feature Ducati already had but chose to throw away, the 999 series was one of the most interesting ergonomically because of this. The only other company anywhere close were GK Design who work for Yamaha, they had a couple of prototypes early nineties that were studies into how the rider interacted with the bike and how you cope with different body sizes. BMW do offer things like seat height options but thats about all. We did a bit of work with this, in cycling you need a female specific model, the base geometry is different as are things like lever shape and lengths/reach and crank lengths, we now offer one model specifically built like this, I can see no reason why a smaller manufacturer like Ducati couldn't do the same with something like a Monster, lower seat height, shorter reach, levers that are closer to the bars and shaped for smaller hands, pegs set a bit closer etc, its a niche but that's exactly where smaller brands should be, doing things the big guys don't see enough volume in (IMHO).
Can a motorcycle assembler do this? I'd say yes, its do-able but will need hard work, a lot of investment and a change in thinking, sales planing and forecasting and possibly distribution model which is always hard to achieve. If the likes of Ducati don't another brand eventually will (my best guess would be KTM trying it), the car industry went like this and I see no reason bikes won't follow eventually, it just depends whether you see your business in moving the same box time after time and in volume or with lower volumes and customers who are prepared to pay for what they want.
) let alone write that much!!! 
