Naked Thunder!

Bertie comes over all unnecessary when he explains his love for Aprilia’s V-twins, especially when he gets naked. Sorry, when THEY get naked…

- BERTIE SIMMONDS

Let’s face it – things are better naked, right? I mean, apart from me of course – I’m as fine an advert for full leathers or two-piece textiles (and full-face helmet with a dark visor) as you get…

I’m talking about bikes… To be fair, I love a fairing: they are useful and, being the age I am, many of the bikes I owned and rode in my youth had one. It’s because I started out around the time of the GSX-R750F. That means some older friends and relatives poo-pooed my love of something with a modicum of aerodynamic efficiency: it’s a ‘crotch rocket or a ‘plastic fantastic’ they said and it ‘wasn’t what proper biking was all about’, they moaned.

I realised they had a point when I managed to nab one of the first Suzuki GSF600 Bandits in the UK. This was 1995 and I’d ridden GSX-R750s and other sports bikes, but I had more fun in 48 hours on that Bandit (and at more legal speeds) than I ever had previously on owt with a fairing. Maybe there was something in all this…

Fast forward the best part of a decade and I’m a paid-up member of the Aprilia fan club. I’d enjoyed the Noale firm’s scooters, I’d appreciated the competence of the Pegaso (even while laughing at the awful Moto 6.5 with the same motor), and then was wowed when their first big bike came out at the end of 1998 – the RSV1000 Mille. For a big lad, it was a Ducati 916 but it was comfy. Better still, I went to Valencia at the end of 1999 and wobbled round at the launch of the R-version. I was hooked! I’ve since owned two of them and am hankering after a third, or maybe a naked third…