#rsv4

Without a doubt, the biggest news in the sportbike scene for 2018 is Ducati’s Panigale V4 and the emergence of a mass-produced four cylinder engine – the Stradale V4. While Ducati has finally left its beloved V-Twin engine behind (at least in terms of superbikes), there was no way the folks in Borgo Panigale would conform to tradition when it came to its new four-banger. For starters, as the name implies, the new engine is arranged as a 90º V4 – essentially multiplying  its V-Twin tradition by two.

By now you already know what happened at the snooze fest that was Austin MotoGP (and if you don’t, I highly suggest you read Mr. Allen’s always wonderful MotoGP recap). Marc Marquez stole the show for the sixth straight year, leaving some fans disappointed with the day’s racing. To be fair, Moto2 and MotoAmerica Superbike provided some good racing; the former with the interesting battle for the lead, and the latter with a tight fight for the podium.

Aprilia took advantage of the third round of MotoGP, making its sole appearance on North American soil to introduce a very exclusive machine. At the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, key members of Aprilia’s MotoGP staff, including Aprilia Racing team manager Romano Albesiano and team riders Aleix Espargaro and Scott Redding, took the covers off the latest evolution of the company’s flagship production sportbike, the RSV4.

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 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…

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.

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?

We’re getting a little giddy around here as we begin to gather the gamut of new superbikes for our most intensive shootout of the year! We’ve got a fabulous two-day street ride to begin our testing, stringing together some of our favorite twisty roads on an overnight trip to begin our superbike shootout. And then the hardcore performance testing will take place over two days at Auto Club Speedway with our friends at Fastrack Riders. If you can be near Fontana, California, May 26-27, you should sign yourself up for a fun day at the track with us!

As far as 2017 is concerned, this might be the year we remember as the one that saw the entire liter-class field go electric. No, I don’t mean like that. I mean electronic rider aids – every major player in the field has them now. Honda and Suzuki, with their CBR1000RR and GSX-R1000, respectively, had held out on introducing riding aids (beyond differing power modes in the Suzuki’s case) until this year. Meanwhile, the rest of the competition has leap-frogged ahead, introducing highly advanced traction control, wheelie control, launch control, slide control, and all kinds of other controls previously only seen on MotoGP machines.

Just in time for the holidays, Aprilia has announced it will be making its most advanced version of the RSV4 – the RSV4 R FW-GP – available to a select few (read: the uber-wealthy). In continuing with the Factory Works program Aprilia Racing launched last year to provide deep-pocketed customers with race-worthy RSV4s in both Superstock and Superbike trims to conform to national and international race organizations, the FW-GP represents the ultimate in Aprilia Racing technology that’s currently available to the public.

Two of MO’s favorite motorcycles are getting minor but notable revisions for 2017, as Aprilia today announced the RSV4 (both RR and RF) and Tuono V4 1100 (both RR and Factory) will be seeing a list of upgrades.

Twenty fifteen was a big year for sportbikes, with the new Yamaha R1 and a heavily revised BMW S1000RR and Aprilia RSV4 RF making their debuts – the two European weapons motoring their way to the Best Sportbike and runner-up awards, respectively, in last year’s Sportbike MOBOs. With the proverbial load being blown that year, there wasn’t much excitement in store for 2016, save for the new, heavily revised Kawasaki ZX-10R. The Green Machine is a good literbike, no doubt, but it still wasn’t a match for the year-old Aprilia RR (the “base” model RSV4) when we put the two $17,000 machines against each other.

On Monday we brought you a flying lap of Auto Club Speedway aboard the 2016 Kawasaki ZX-10R, the runner-up in our two-way fight between it and the Aprilia RSV4 RR (which you can read about here). We praised the Kawasaki’s handling prowess and were really impressed with its updated electronics. However, we still gave the overall win in the comparison test to the Aprilia by the sheer fact it’s so easy to ride quickly. The V-4 engine’s wonderful, distinctive growl down low, combined with its pissed off bark up top encourages its rider to want to twist that throttle every chance they get. Luckily for us, that engine also produces abundant, usable torque throughout its rev range – a feature that helped it win our comparo.