Aprilia Tuono V4R Coming Soon to U.S.

edpix   December 1, 2011 02:50 PM
I think this will be a excellent bike to ride and love the uniqueness of the V4 mated to a Aprilia chassis, I just have a real hard time with the insect head upper front fairing. I am sure if I rode one I would love it because the performance will be excellent as long as the injection mapping is really good at ALL rpms. Besides the subjective styling question, I really do wish these superbike based nakeds and semi nakeds would have more upper fairing/windshield protection than the minimalist speedometer fairings that are so common. Superbike performance means nothing if you are getting blown off the back when the speeds get up there. There still is no real high performance, lightweight superbike based sport bike available that has adequate upper fairing/windshield coverage to allow the full useage of a superbikes performance at higher speeds. The current FZ-1 comes closest but it certainly is far from state of the art as it uses the older Yamaha engine,is overweight and under powered compared to the current crop of superbikes. So I am still sitting on the fence waiting for a 1/2 fairinged, moderately higher handlebared, 2 up, superbike derived sportbike to be developed.

edpix   December 1, 2011 08:38 AM
This bike had so much potential in theory and then the "stylist" got involved! Is there some design rule somewhere that says if you want a naked or semi naked bike based on a leading edge sport bike that it has to be UGLY! Look at the Ducati Streetfighter which now actually looks good compared to this! I was really hoping that Aprilia might have noticed that this new V4 Tuono is damn ugly before releasing it to the poor Aprilia dealers where it will sit on their showroom floors for 2 years before it is discounted enough to actually sell it.