The crusher, still picking small pieces of Norton Nemesis from its teeth.
The crusher, still picking small pieces of Norton Nemesis from its teeth, is now preparing to swallow whole the unfortunate Aprilia Moto' 6.5...
Aprilia commissioned French avant-garde designer of the '90s, Philippe Starck to design a motorcycle. What they got was a crime against motorcycling. While quite adept at styling lemon squeezers and kettles for people more interested in making statements than sandwiches in their kitchens, Phil was clearly not the man for the job when it came to designing motorcycles for actual motorcyclists.
Although he actually rides himself, it is hard to imagine exactly what was going through Phil's mind as he twiddled his magic marker. The tank looks like a tea-cosy for one of his famous kettles, the wilfully quaint grey-sleeved cables like something off a John Major replica lawnmower and the queer oval frame putting form well in front of function to contrive an apostrophe shape for no reason whatsoever.
Round it all off with a convex radiator blending into what looks like a colander run over by a bus and then the masterstroke - an exhaust collector box doubling as a bash-plate, and you've got a dinner a dog would die for.
Running on conspicuously unfashionable high-profile tyres (designers do so much enjoy contrariness for its own sake), the Moto' was dropped on a poor unsuspecting public back in '95. The public was hardly ready. They were still trying to cope with Massimo Tamburini's Ducati 916 (you know, one of those rubbish bikes that emerges when you actually ask a motorcycle designer to design a motorcycle).
Aprilia was brave to give Starck a go, but the few Moto' 6.5s you do see are invariably the wheels of other 'designers' or purblind fools with an 'eye' for a bargain. They'd have been better off asking Ralph Lauren to help with the injection-mapping on the RSV.
Take this monstrosity to the jaws of doom and let the metal molars rid us of this pretentious tripe-hound.
