Aprilia working on a three-wheeled Yamaha Niken rival

SINCE its launch 2018, the Yamaha Niken has gone some way to normalising full-size, leaning multi-wheel motorcycles. Following hot on the heels of Yamaha is Aprilia, as new patents show them working on a leaning multi-wheel machine of its own.

Yamaha Niken 'Your Questions Answered'!

The patents seem to show a bike that has already been heavily developed, with the images showing a high level of detail. If this were a project in the early stages of development, the picture of the machine would be much more basic. Instead, we can see plenty of detail, enough that we can even identify the bike the new machine is based on, the Mana 850. Should the bike retain the mechanicals of the Mana, that’ll make it a twist-and-go machine, possibly making it the missing link in the world of leaning multi-wheel motorcycles.

The Aprilia Mana 850 seems to be the basis of the bike in the patent

The front end is obviously where all the work has gone with the design, with the rest of the bike from the footpegs back being identical to the Mana. The system is not a carbon copy of the front end seen on the MP3 leaning multi-wheel scooter, although it's clearly been the starting point the team has worked from. The system features a pair of parallel bars, that almost act like upper wishbones on a car suspension system. They are mounted one above the other, and pivot in the centre, much like the Yamaha Niken system. Unlike the Niken though, which uses conventional forks tubes to suspend the wheels, the Aprilia method uses a coil-over shock-abosorber to soak up the bumps.