#Aprilia

Dear MOby,

We can’t say that we blame Aprilia since the RSV4 is, according to the Book of MO, one of the greatest sportbikes – perhaps ever. Need proof? In the last year, the Aprilia RSV4 RR won both the street and the track portions of our superbike shootout on its way to the overall win. Then it notched a MOBO (and not its first, mind you) as Best Sportbike Of 2017. So, like we said, we can’t blame Aprilia for sitting on its laurels a tad when it came to updating the RSV4 for 2018.

So, you’ve got a 2017 (or are planning on buying a 2018) Aprilia RSV4 in an RR or RF configuration and you know what it really needs is more performance. Well, Aprilia’s got just the thing for you in the form of the Aprilia Racing Factory Works Kit. The special parts are developed by Aprilia Racing in conjunction with superstock and superbike championships around the world to assure their compliance to series rules. Racers (or riders with deep pockets and a disregard for street legality) who want to take their RSV4s to the next level should take a gander at these parts which are directed towards “maximizing engine performance, reducing overall weight, and improving aerodynamics.”

It’s rare that a manufacturer debuts two new models at the same time unless there are multiple trims such as the Aprilia RSV4 RR and Factory versions. When MO found out we would be riding both Aprilia’s new Dorsoduro and its Shiver 900, I was actually looking forward to the novel opportunity. It would be interesting to see how different the motorcycles would feel while sharing many of the same components, most notably, the same 896cc 90-degree V-Twin engine.

For the second time this season, Factory Ducati #1 Andrea Dovizioso and Repsol Honda prodigy Marc Marquez gave us a late-race knives-in-a-phonebooth duel, a ten-point spread in the standings at the top of the heap at stake. And for the second time this season, Dovizioso prevailed in what was almost a carbon copy of the first win, a last lap exchange of fortunes in Austria. Now it’s Two for the Road, as the two “blessed” riders in this year’s championship, separated by 11 points, seem destined to square off in Valencia.

I asked around at the launch of the Dorsoduro (and Shiver) 900, why was this bike named “Dorsoduro”? I know what the Dorsoduro is and have visited the district in the Italian city of Venice on two separate occasions, but I was looking for an answer full of emotion and history which I have come to expect from Italian manufacturers (and their marketing departments). To my surprise, everyone began to tell me what the name was rather than why it was named as such. Well, after having ridden the 2018 Aprilia Dorsoduro 900, it is clear to me why the Italian manufacturer would look to one of Italy’s most iconic cities and why they would choose the sestieri of Dorsoduro as its namesake.

When Aprilia invited Motorcycle.com to the press introduction for the 2018 Shiver 900 first ride, I thought, hadn’t that model been announced at EICMA 2016 as an upcoming 2017 model? If so, the model had been selling for a while already, right? It had. But as is typical, those lucky Europeans got it first and we had to wait. After the bikes made their journey across the ocean, braving Hurricane Harvey, and worse yet, meeting homologation, the new 900s arrived state-side. A few weeks later, the introduction of the new 2018 Aprilia Shiver 900 would commence.

It takes a really special motorbike to win our MOTY award, and the Super Duke GT comes from premium stock, as it’s based on the winner of our 2014 Motorcycle of the Year, the 1290 Super Duke R. The uncanny beauty of the GT is that it retains the wonderful virtues of the R and expands the platform with a plethora of comfort and convenience updates that enhance the bike’s appeal without appreciably hindering its performance capabilities.

For those who’ve lapped up every word, expression, and metaphor of the performance novel that was our 2017 Superbike Track Shootout and Superbike Street Shootout, the heir apparent is as obvious as the bike coming in last place. For those still wallowing in anticipation, unable to decipher our MOrse code, you can take a breath because, without further ado, we give you…

So how does slamming a suicidal rock, thus spewing hot juicy oil all over your rear tire, sound to you as you’re flying down your favorite mountain road? Sorta frightening, right? Because it is. Ask me how I know. Then ask me which of my favorite four-letter words I chose to spit out of my helmet were once I realized that this could have been really bad. Reeeeeealllly reeeeeaaalllly bad. I was thrilled to be climbing off my bike by choice as opposed to a sudden unplanned eviction over the side of a mountain. Guardian angel, this round’s on me.

With more passing than you’d see at an April 20 party, the 2017 Motul Assen TT was one of the more riveting races in recent memory. Tech 3 Yamaha rookie sensation Johann Zarco led the first 11 laps from pole. Meanwhile, Valentino Rossi and Ducati brute Danilo Petrucci were in the heart of the lead group along with Marc Marquez on the Repsol Honda. But Rossi – fast, patient and strategic – managed to beat Petrucci to the flag by .06 seconds. They don’t call him The Doctor for nothing.

A few days riding seven of the most powerful sportbikes available on public roadways without incurring a single speeding ticket is next to miraculous. Johnny Law, wildlife, tourists, and sharing hotel rooms with one another are only a few of the occupational hazards we navigated when conducting our 2017 Superbike Street Shootout. The street-centric comparison may be representative of the actual lives most of these motorcycles will lead in the real world, but for us it’s a necessary precursor to where we prefer to be and where these bikes should actually be ridden: the racetrack.

The chance to ride a real-deal 250 Grand Prix World Championship bike is the stuff dreams are made of. I grew up obsessed by 250GP racing. In my teens, in the 1990s I knew every rider, every race number, had the posters on my bedroom wall and all of the races taped on videotape! As soon as I got my Learners, I was on the road on an old RZ250FN, followed by a few TZR250s before I started roadracing on RGV250s in 1995. Even my RGV racebike was painted the same colors as the Ralf Waldman HB 250. Riding the RGV proddie, I dreamed of one day being a 250 GP rider.

As Bob Dylan wrote, the times, they are a’changing. All you need to do is take a look at our latest superbike shootout to see that technology is playing an ever-increasing role in how we ride motorcycles. What about simpler things, like instruments? Well, superbike instrumentation has been changing, too. Of our seven superbike contestants, only one has an old-school, swept needle tachometer. The remaining six count on some kind of bar graph. Three of the bikes have LCD screens delivering at least some of their information while the remaining four utilize color on TFT screens. So, we thought we’d ask our loyal *MO*rons what they thought about the instruments. Vote for all the instruments you like, and we’ll figure out which is the best.

It’s been two years since we summoned together the superpowers of the sportbike world. In that time the Aprilia RSV4 RR, Honda CBR1000RR, Kawasaki ZX-10R, and Suzuki GSX-R1000 have either been heavily revised or completely overhauled. These changes beg a reinspection into the pecking order of world’s premier street-legal superbikes. Can Japan wrest away the literbike crown from the European OEMs, Aprilia and BMW, that have dominated the class since 2010?