Aprilia is now determined to become a company whose products are recognised as being fun to drive and practical on road rather than aiming to have the best track times spec sheet (fighting of tenths of seconds that no one even realises practically). Hence their flagship model, RSV 1000 Mille, though may not be your rubber burning track day beast (all those Gixxers and Ninjas), but it certainly will be more satisfying on that Sunday morning countryside drive. Maybe something like a sports tourer.
The same thing seems to be translating in their motor sport effort as well. They look to be set to completely drop their MotoGP program for now as they say it does not translate to any direct road going applications and therefore no direct economic advantages to talk about. So instead, they will now focus their efforts in the World Superbike Championship commonly known as the SBK. This will ensure three things.
1. Firstly, they already have a bike ready for it in the RSV 1000 and hence as investment on R&D is considerably reduced, at the same time they do not have to start from scratch.
2. Secondly, the tech used can be directly passed on to the production model.
3. And finally, as people can relate the racing machine with what they drive on normal days, the attraction for it increases.
Also as a bonus fall out, they plan to release a limited SBK edition bike, which no doubt will be slightly dearer than your stock RSV. All these three reasons (and the bonus) make for excellent marketing sense for a company like Aprilia which does not have billions to spend on MotoGP, yet wants a sporting image.
So, the plans are all in place and it now upto how they execute them. And with Leo Mercanti back (this time as the boss), the future surely looks brighter than the recent past for Aprilia.
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