THIRD DIMENSION

In Europe, Aprilia’s 660cc middleweight duo have been the standout sellers from any European brand in 2021 in the ever more hotly contested 600-800cc middleweight sector fought over by more than a dozen different manufacturers from east and west. A sector that, until quite recently, was dominated by increasingly more extreme supersport models – but now a cocktail of insurance costs, speed cameras and good old-fashioned commonsense has sidelined these road-legal race replicas to the racetrack. Alongside the nakedbikes that have provided an increasingly popular real-world alternative to them, another segment is taking off in the middleweight marketplace. Adventure bikes are the flavour of the moment, and while there will probably always be a market for two-wheeled Range Rovers like the BMW R 1250 GS, Ducati Multistrada V4 and KTM Super Adventures, the real growth in the go-anywhere market is in that 600-800cc midsize sector.

Now, in a challenge to Yamaha’s popular Ténéré 700 with its MT-07 parallel-twin motor, Aprilia has launched the Tuareg 660 – named after the nomadic North African people whose salt caravans criss-cross the Sahara Desert, and a hallowed Aprilia model name since the mid-80s rather than VW’s SUV, which copied Aprilia by adopting the name only in 2002!

REMEMBER APRILIA WAS ORIGINALLY AN OFF-ROAD BRAND

Anyone much over the age of 40 is likely to be surprised if you tell them Aprilia was originally an off-road brand, more concerned with leavening its range of 50/125cc urban runarounds with World title-winning Trials bikes and a seriously capable range of Rotax-powered Enduro