After bringing Moto Guzzi under the Aprilia umbrella in 2000, the company’s depth was a great help to Guzzi, and build quality improved within the year. The V11 Le Mans was introduced in 2001, the recipient of many special parts and paint schemes. Offered by a Mass. dealer, this example was stored since the buyer…
Obviously, there are “rare” motorcycles that don’t cost an arm and a leg to own and, although there are plenty of affordable Ducatis, Aprilias, and even Bimotas that appear on this site, not everyone wants to own an Italian exotic or lives near a shop that can work on their baby. So if cash is…
Although the American motorcycling community seems divided along impractical bikes at either end of the spectrum, journalists and riding enthusiasts long bemoaned the lack of real performance nakeds like this second-generation Aprilia Tuono: bikes that had the performance of a sportbike with all-day ergonomics. A bike you could ride to the twisties and then in…
Aprilia brought the RSV Mille to the superbike segment in 1998, and while sales numbers weren’t high, it was their flagship, the dream bike of 50/125/250cc Aprilia riders the world over. They pursued WSBK with the SP variant, and updated the fairing and narrowed the tank for 2001. With 128 ponies on tap, and nice…
In the Ducati line-up from 1974-2007, the SuperSport has often been the sportiest Ducati, but more lately the second-sportiest. Using the air-cooled Desmodue when the SuperBikes had radiators and four valve heads, and often available in smaller displacements, the SuperSports often had half-fairings and a corner of the showroom away from the window. This SS…
With all the flack Pierre Terblanche gets for his futuristic restyle of the Superbike line, it’s easy to forget just why Ducati gave him a job in the first place. And while the 999 is finally beginning to be recognized for the design classic it is, bikes like his Supermono and today’s Ducati MH900e are there…
As is always the case with exotic machinery, a simple truth-in-advertising name sounds so much better in Italian… Oooooh. A Maserati Quattroporte… That sounds so sexy. Wait, it just means “four doors”? You’re saying that the name of that four-door Maserati is “Maserati four-door”? The same thing is true for Ducati’s GP6-based Desmosedici D16RR road…
Aside from the disastrous VDue, Bimota’s stock-in-trade was wrapping lightweight frames and fantastically exotic bodywork around reliable powertrains from established manufacturers. The magical formula that led to bikes like the Bimota SB6 seems so simple, it’s a wonder it took so long for other manufacturers to catch on: wrap too much engine in too little…