One morning this week, Whisenant walked a visitor to the back shop at Motorcycle Performance, where two bikes he’d taken to Bonneville in 2012 — last October was rained out — sat partially disassembled. The Ducati’s body was off, and Whisenant ran his hand along the frame.

“It runs like a Cadillac at 195 (mph),” he said. “At 200, it starts moving around a bit.”

At the last Bonneville meet, in 2012, Whisenant pushed the Ducati to 212 mph. It’s the fastest anyone in the United States has gone on a Ducati. In Europe, in a timed segment of a road race, a Ducati was timed at 216.

Whisenant thinks his Ducati can top 220 at Bonneville in October. In the shop on University Avenue, they’re working on adding horsepower and fixing the movement that commences at 200 mph.

It’s quite a way from the first shop Whisenant opened, in 1977, in what had been a pig barn in Verona. By then, he’d worked for just about every dealer in town. He moved into the present space at 5205 University a year later. “It felt palatial,” Whisenant said.

He has since added space and built a loyal clientele for both sales and service. One early customer, Peter Egan, became a well-known automotive journalist.