Precious metal: FULL MOON

Igor Akrapovič is a remarkable man, who’s earned his eponymous exhaust company’s soaraway success and made his name synonymous with excellence in exhausts both on and off-road. His company celebrated its 25th birthday in 2016, and the more than 100 World Championship titles, which Akrapovič – pronounced a-CROP-o-vitch, not acrow-poh-vick – exhausts have earned on the race tracks of the world in the past quarter-century say that simply the best is what they indeed are.

Still, you wouldn’t really expect the Slovenian sultan of sound’s products to equip Harley-Davidson cruisers alongside the Yamaha YZR-M1 racers on which Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales fight to win the MotoGP World championship, or the Kawasaki ZX-10R on which Jonathan Rea has just captured a trio of World Superbike titles.

But that’s indeed the case, for this serial success has been achieved without Akrapovič becoming distracted from serving its everyday retail customers – or from driving expansion in new market sectors where looks and above all sound are what attract customers to the sign of the scorpion carried on each Slovenian-made exhaust – Akrapovič means ‘scorpion’ in Slovene.

So while added performance is still the