It’s ironic that the first all-new MV Agusta after the Italian brand was acquired by Austrian giant Pierer Mobility, owner of off-road titan KTM, should be the company’s first adventure tourer of the modern era, powered by MV’s all-new 931cc three-cylinder engine that’s destined to form the basis of a whole series of new models in the coming months and years. Because this was the motorcycle that Stefan Pierer told me last June, after he’d bought the initial 25.1 percent slice, that MV Agusta should not be making!
“Adventure bikes are a big market sector, but they’re also the most difficult segment and the most competitive to be present in,” he told me. “Nobody is waiting for such a model from MV Agusta.”
Yet six months later at last year’s EICMA Milan Show was the renewed unveiling of what had been called the Lucky Explorer 9.5 when the covers first came off it two years earlier at the same venue. Now renamed the Enduro Veloce, and with the benefit of two further years of development, the bike the boss didn’t want built has now entered production and is available at some MV dealers around the world.
So now Pierer and his minions must await the opinion of the marketplace, to see whether anyone was indeed waiting for an adventure bike with a superlative heritage and a unique specification. Costing a stiff $A37,800 in Italy, with a four-year unlimited kilometre warranty,
