Aprilia Futura for sale
SELLER SAYS: This bike has travelled only 21,000km since new in 2003 and is in excellent condition. I am its second owner. Extras include Staintune mufflers, Dominator Decat exhaust headers and original exhaust components. The bike has the original Aprilia cases with inner liners in pristine condition, an Aprilia tank bag and Hepco Becker rear rack (not fitted), as well as some new spare parts. The Futura is the same family as the Tuono and RSV Mille and is timeless in its design and appearance. Contact Warran on 0438 944 959 (Bedfordale, WA).
EDITOR TERLICK SAYS: Consumer marketing is a strange science. Once a product gets a stranglehold on a market segment, it is incredibly difficult for a new product to knock it off. Case in point — Honda’s VFR range. The VFR750 and then the VFR800 virtually owned the sporty end of the sports-tourer market for many years, bringing together a very impressive blend of sports bike ‘go’ and tourer comfort. The sporty-sports-tourer turned out to be a huge market – a fact that did not go unnoticed by many other manufacturers, including Aprilia. And so Aprilia put its considerable efforts to have a crack at the VFR, and came up with this bike, the Futura RST1000. And what a great machine they created. Top-shelf suspension, well-designed and clever hard luggage, one of the most comfortable two-person bike seats you’ll ever find, and a glorious Rotax V-twin engine delivered precisely what Aprilia wanted — a VFR-beater. But it didn’t sell. Yes, the Futura was expensive but the bigger problem was that the VFR was absolutely entrenched as the bike to have. As a result, the Futura lasted just three years before being retired. Now, more than 20 years later, the Futura presents the same attraction as it did in the very early 2000s — a rare and fantastic sporty sports-tourer, with Italian flair, offering a stylish alternative to Japan’s dominant Honda. As a parting shot, here’s what respected online bike magazine Motorcyclist had to say: “(The Aprilia Futura) seems to settle into a vacant niche in the sport-tourer range. It’s not quite as sporting as a Honda VFR (yet very close), but then the more compact VFR isn’t nearly the traveler the Futura is, with its hard bags and posh seat — especially if you’re carrying a passenger. No BMW has the Futura’s combination of horsepower and handling. The Triumph Sprint ST and Ducati ST4 are in the performance ballpark, but neither of them approach the Aprilia’s interesting architecture and daring design.”
