Time to revive the Aprilia Caponord? This V4 design study is a good starter…
A designer in Italy gives Aprilia some food for thought with his take on what a potential Aprilia Caponord V4 adventure tourer should look like...
As is so often the case in the motorcycle industry, Aprilia has been among the firms getting retro nostalgic of late with the decision to launch a new Tuareg adventure bike developed around the 660 platform - but could it set its sights a little higher with a new V4-engined Caponord?
That’s the thinking behind this very convincing concept design study from Italian Lorenzo Coppo - find and follow him on Instagram HERE - and while there is no affiliation with Aprilia itself, it could do worse than pore over his wares for some inspiration.
Aprilia hasn’t offered the Caponord - its road-biased adventure sports tourer - for some years, seemingly giving into the fight presented by its top selling main rival, the Ducati Multistrada.
However, with Ducati going on to give its Multistrada a new lease of life with the inclusion of industry-first tech and tweaked version of its Panigale-sourced V4 engine, attention has returned to Aprilia to see whether it could go toe-to-toe with its own V-configured four pot.
Of course, unlike Ducati, Aprilia are relative old hands at the V4 game having developed the rev-hungry unit for use to devastating effect back in 2009 for the RSV 4 and later the Tuono V4.
As such, the current engine - even in updated 1100cc guise - is ageing by comparison, but any fresh version could well serve a purpose in a new Aprilia Caponord V4.
At the very least this is an attractive vision, combining the newly adopted family look of the latest RSV4 - in turn inspired by the RS 660 - into a more upright tourer silhouette, while we salute the effort into making it look ‘real’ with riders and all.
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, an Aprilia Caponord V4 would likely take greater inspiration from the Tuono V4, so - very estimate - power figures would be in the range of 170-175bhp, a significant increase on the 120bhp of the ‘predecessor’.
Like we say, this is a fantasy for the time being but there is no denying an Aprilia Caponord V4 would make some sense in the year 2022...
