Filippo Brunelleschi would be quite taken with a modern Italian company like Aprilia. Brunelleschi, despite being comprised of 2 parts dolt, managed to create structures that surpassed both engineering and design capabilities of the then current expert craftsmen of the Renaissance. Despite having no understanding of Hoop Stress to begin with, Brunelleschi managed to create the largest domed structure known until that time in Europe, the Santa Maria del Fiore. From being an unremarkable Goldsmith, a loser in Bronze casting competitions, Brunelleschi took a century old design, created the structural engineering mathematical language to make it real, and made himself rich. So he built a really, really big boat with all the cash he made from the project, and literally sunk most of his fortune into it on the first voyage.
Much like Aprilia.
Take a scooter company run by petrol heads, a European culture that requires personal mobility but doesn't have the space to let everyone park a car, and you have the economic conditions necessary to create a scooter manufacturing boom that allowed Aprilia to create winning race bikes at a time when they produced no road bikes bigger than the Aprilia AF1 125cc two stroke race replica. Lovely bike, perfectly tailored to the learner laws prevalent in the EU at the time and easily capable of 30HP when unrestricted. Winning 125cc and 250cc GP bikes and lots of Chesterfield fag money and you have a nice big wad of cash for an enthusiast company.
A little too much cash.
Two stroke scooters start being banned from major conurbations, Aprilia up the 250cc GP bike to 400cc and Ulsterman Jeremy McWilliams starts doing unbelievable things like pole position against the hairy Honda 500cc bikes. However Aprilia's scooter sales start to nose dive, cc rating restrictions for learners turn into certified HP limits and just as the RSV starts doing OK in WSB the switch to 990cc MotoGP eats the last of Aprilia's free money, thanks to a triple labelled the "Brick". Colin Edwards' mountain oysters being fried on the Brick, necessitating a hurried, graceless exit from a 120MPH motorcycle demonstrates Aprilia's fiery nosedive beautifully. Parts suppliers go unpaid, workers go unpaid, distributors start getting antsy about being unable to fulfill warranty and supply conditions and Ivan Beggio starts a PR campaign based on hope rather than substance.
Enter Piaggio.
Big, big company. Aprilia were always blighted by their small range of non-scooter two wheelers. A 125, a 250, both two strokes and on the verge of being eco-greeny arseholed, and fire breathing 1000cc V-Twins produced by Rotax, a company renowned for building ultra-reliable small capacity engines for ultra-light aircraft and remote controlled drones. Rotax are an Austrian company though and not given to bouts of good humour in regard to not being paid for engines supplied or development work undertaken.
Piaggio take engine development in-house and do a proper job of it.
Rotax go and sell the latest evolution of the RSV-R V-Twin to Buell who promptly make a Sportsbike with side boobs.
Piaggio are responsible for the Shiver concept in its entirety, and for that I am ever grateful. Aprilia's RSV-R and Tuono are two of my favourite bikes, but not putting too finer a point on it, I'm clever enough to know my limitations. Both bikes are far too capable, vastly, stupendously, galactically endowed with power handling and brakes, to let me keep either my license or my sanity for long. You HAVE to ride them like you stole them or they make no sense at all.
The Shiver features an engine forged from within the clinically exact ennvirons of Piaggio's engine shop. 94HP, from a 750cc twin, 20HP up on an SV650, and only half a dozen shy of a Z750. A modern new-fangled fly by wire throttle which feels like it is connected to your emotions rather than your wrist. If you are at all uncommitted to your next course of action it will mess you around in return. Direct proceedings with aplomb and verve and your reward is a very floaty front-end (I bet Brunelleschi would have liked one of those) when on the throttle, but one that tracks true irrespective of the worst that Wainuiomata's Coast Rd can dish up, and provides a full measure of comfort while doing so.
The front brakes are that modern revelation, the radial mounted Brembo. Lots of bite from the get go and at speed can prevent death by mid-road carpet and underlay without raising any fuss at all.
How did they do it? It looks like it could only be regarded as a budget bike, indeed it competes with the Street Triple, the new Z750, the Bandit 650, the ER-6N, the SV650, all, except notably the Street Triple, shouldered with compromise in areas like suspension or finish.
And yet it's frame looks like it was an Origami sculpture, tempered by referencing Renaissance classical architects, lovingly crafted to blend with a look that extends to the shape of the radiator, the seat unit, the bungy hooks, and the footpeg mounts. The Sachs rear shock, the factory upside down forks, the powerful front brakes and beautifully crafted, gold painted chassis all combine to give you a magic carpet ride that is compliant, well damped (but slightly undersprung for someone with my ebullient attitude to comestibles and alcohol), and has you performing at your very best routinely ignoring things like braking for corners, and riding "sensibly".
It's like someone at Aprilia opened up my head and looked in there and dragged out what I thought would be the best combination of price, performance, handling, ergonomics and power delivery.
It's tiny, sexy, angularly beautiful in an idiot savant with a big Meccano set way, and every bit the competitor for the Street Triple.
Some commentators bemoan the loss of personalities like Sig. Beggio from the Italian motorcycle scene. Tough. If the Shiver is a hint of things to come, then Triumph have a fight on their hands and the Japanese just got their Sushied buttocks handed to them in a little clear plastic takeaway pack.
Some people look at the Shiver and proclaim it brutto. Look closer and it proclaims pride and attention to detail in a way that Triumph is yet to match, but above all it shouts classy Italian bike.
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Originally Posted by Jim2
Mrs Kendog is happy.
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