The Indian motorcycling industry has seen many new entrants in the recent years. The 2012 Delhi Auto Expo also announced the arrival of a few more companies like Triumph. We recently revealed Piaggio’s plans to re-introduce the Vespa brand into India next month. Insiders have tipped us that Piaggio plans to get very aggressive with the Aprilia brand in India and is looking at challenging KTM. Just like how the Aprilia RS4 125 is a beginners bike in Europe, KTM too has the Duke 125, but for India a more powerful Duke 200 was launched. Piaggio, which is the largest 2-wheeler manufacturer in Europe is betting big on the Indian motorcycle market.
The Aprilia RS4, which is a smaller version of the flagship RSV4 factory is expected to get a 200 cc engine (Aprilia is still working on this at the moment and has not finalized the engine yet). This engine might be borrowed from another Piaggio vehicle and will help Aprilia challenge its closest rival KTM. This 200cc Aprilia motorcycle will be retailed through the Piaggio dealerships and not through standalone Aprilia showrooms. Currently Aprilia is selling 6-7 superbikes a year in India, making it unfeasible to setup a standalone dealership. Piaggio has a long term plan in place and thus decided to design the showrooms very thoughtfully from the start itself, with air-conditioning and a strong service support being implemented across all the initial 50 dealerships.
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The RS4 125 is a proper sports motorcycle that commands a legendary racing heritage of Aprilia in various MotoGP and Superbike series championships. The Aprilia RS4 125 is powered by a 125 cc, 4 stroke, single cylinder, liquid cooled, DOHC, fuel injected motor with a compression ratio of 12.5:1. This engine is mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox via a wet multi-plate clutch. At the front, the bike gets 41 mm diameter Upside down forks with a wheel travel of 110 mm while at the rear, it gets an asymmetric swingarm with monoshock with a wheel travel of 130 mm. The bike rides on 100/80 -17” tires at the front and 130/70 – 17” inch wheels at the rear. Stopping power is provided by a 300 mm stainless steel disc at the front and a 218 mm diameter stainless steel disc at the rear. The bike measures 1953 mm in overall length, 740 mm in width and 820 mm in saddle height with a wheelbase of 1350mm.
