Venetian Balls – Aprilia Tuono 1000R
Crazy bikes never stay loopy for very long. There’s a long list in the recent annals of motorcycle manufacturing that testifies to this premise. Think of the first Honda FireBlade, the original Yamaha R1 and the baddest of them all, Suzuki’s TL1000S.
Wild headlines, raucous reputations and more than a few missed heartbeats may make entertaining riding and reading, but there are limited amounts of people who want to cheat injury and live the bawdy T-shirt slogans.
So bikes are polished and burnished, ‘ toned and honed, to broaden their appeal. The devil inside retreats deeper into a bike’s soul and is ever more reticent to make an appearance on your shoulder. But an hour into my first ride on the 2006 Aprilia Tuono, Beelzebub was making my ears ring shouting sweet everythings in my ear; wheelie, stoppie, faster, Faster, FASTER.
Aprilia appears to be fucking with convention. We left the castle that Aprilia had put us up in and it felt as if I’d transformed into a medieval knight, ready to joust and battle with fierce foes. In this case the enemies were the local roads that were best described as sketchy and the bike itself, whose violent reputation preceded it.
But as we pottered through the town that would lead us to the country, the Tuono behaved as if we were running errands for an infirm grandparent. Rather than the angry, headstrong bike the old Tuono could be, the 2006 version showed that it was more than a dirty-tricked pony. It may not have been exciting, yet, but functionality is never a bad thing, especially when tomfoolery is around the corner. The high footpegs and relatively poor steering lock knocked a few points off, but already the Aprilia was impressing.
Drive in top is available from just 2,500rpm, which is much lower than you’d expect for a bike boasting such huge performance. With little vibration down here (thanks to Aprilia’s Anti Vibration Double Countershaft system) you can afford to be lazy through town, and even in lower gears the fuelling is much improved and very little snatch is felt as the throttle deftly opens the big 57mm throttle bodies.
Heading out of town and up the Passo San Boldo was leisurely in pace, but fraught with danger. 18 hairpins and a number of tunnels doused with fresh mountain dew meant that pressure was on the sporty Dunlop 208RRs to behave. The old bike would have struggled as even a hint of power would have got the tepid tyres spinning, but the 2006 model remained sure-footed as it headed to the alpine plateau that was our playground for the day.
Normally pampered with billiard-table smooth corners for press shots, Aprilia’s photographers presented us with a testing first corner. Narrow, with an average surface, I tentatively took the Tuono round. But within a few passes the evil streak of the Tuono had taken over and made light work of the terrain.
On the cold Dunlops the Aprilia’s pure sportsbike chassis turned in eagerly after a nudge on the high bars (in spite of the 190-section rear tyre slowing the steering up), sometimes too eagerly, requiring the bike to stand up for an instance, and remain committed to a line even if grip wasn’t as available as you’d like.
The application of power while leant over didn’t upset the poise of the bike either as the Tuono could be pulled through to the next straight easily. Not bad considering the shock looks to have been built to a budget, only possessing preload and rebound adjustment.
The forks really inspire liberty taking, and, throughout the ride, the feel from the front encouraged all sorts of crude behaviour on roads that left no leeway for error. Slow hairpins felt safe while quicker turns felt stable and, no matter the quality of the road, the Tuono felt as assured as it was unbothered.
Approaching each corner was a pleasure too as the Brembo radial brakes offered almost the perfect blend of power and usability. Aprilia’s brakes have often been too vicious for their own good, biting almost too hard for the suspension, tyres and confidence of a rider but the Tuono now offers stoppers as good as you’ll find anywhere.
So all you need to do now is to punch out of each corner onto the next and you’ve got yourself a pretty sorted machine. And the new Tuono fits the bill magnificently. There’s huge pull from 4,500rpm and as the smart new rev counter and front tyre heads north you’ll find yourself in a world of wicked giggles.
If you can hang on to a gear you’ll find that there’s plenty of kick at the top of the range, tailing off a little when you reach the rev-limiter at 11,000rpm, but unless you’re at a track then you really don’t need to live life here.
Being hyper critical, I’d say that the gearbox isn’t perfect, but every other component works well. The fuel injection is sorted, power and torque are bountiful and the Tuono just gets better the quicker you dare. And quick equates to 280kph if the max-speed readout is to be believed.
Final Analysis
So is this a bike that remains mad? You bet it does. It behaves, badly mostly, but it can keep its nose clean if it really tries. A certain degree of polish has been applied but this is a bike that remains deranged and should only be considered by the committed – in every sense.
Source: SuperBike Magazine