Aprilia Tuono and Tuareg 660

[Navy Boy]

Good Day All

Whilst my Caponord was in having its 40k service this week I manged to have a good old ride on both a Tuono and Tuareg 660 from the good people at Motorazzi in central Wellington. Below is a summary of my thoughts on these two middleweight rippers.

Looks

Looks are subjective. The Tuono is a cracking looking machine to my mind - The Tuareg takes a bit more getting used to. I actually like the function over form look but a V85TT would always win a beauty contest compared to this one IMHO.

Comfort

The Tuono is physically small, like most sporty naked machines these days, but manages to feel comfy enough for a day-long ride. The tank cut outs worked well for my knees which isn't always the case and the bars were just the right distance away to give you some weight on the front end without being too much. As you'd expect the Tuareg is far roomier and fits my 6 foot frame somewhat better. However either would be comfy enough for a decent length ride me thinks.

Electronics

Yes they have them... Lots of them. They're reasonably easy to operate and the switchgear, unlike a Honda NT1100 or Africa Twin, is quite simple to fathom out. The rider modes seemed to make sense to me too which isn't always the case. Nice instrument panel too, especially the Tuareg's affair which is one of the best I've used thus far on any bike.

Engine

For me at least this is the main selling point of these bikes. The engine is a cracker with a 270 degree crank giving the sound of a V-Twin and they felt responsive too. The Tuareg's gearing seemed slightly shorter which made it even more responsive at open road speeds. Crisp fuelling and a light and smooth clutch action made riding them smoothly through traffic dead easy. Full marks in this respect.

Value

They are priced competitively and being European have a certain something to the styling and feel compared to the competition. Put alongside an SV650 the Tuono looks to be costly for not much obvious benefit but put against a KTM Duke the comparison becomes a whole lot harder to define. As always it depends what you compare them to but for my money they are, at the very least, competitive with what else is around.

Overall

It's interesting to see how far the middleweight class has come in the past 10+ years. Both these bikes could easily be all the bike you'd ever need, both would make you proud to ride them and would engender some real pride of ownership. I loved riding them both though I'm looking forward to climbing back on my Capo 1200 too

[F5 Dave]

But the RS660 is the looker.

[Navy Boy]

Yep - The RS is lovely machine alright. I'm not sure my back/limbs would work too well on it though. The Tuono is already fairly sporty in its demeanour.