I wake up every morning glad that the apocalypse hasn’t happened yet. I’m sure it will happen sooner or later, whether it’s in the form of a Nostradamus prediction come true, a Terminator-style machine takeover, or, far less likely, a Biblical event. I wake up every morning and smile because it’s still sunny in LA and machines aren’t tearing my house to shreds, picking up my Corvette, and throwing it across the street through my neighbor’s kitchen window.

There is one exception to this behavior: The morning that Aprilia’s new mid-sized Supermoto arrived on my doorstep. Enter the Dorsoduro SMV750. This thing looks like it’s ready for war. From the jacked up frame, murdered out gas tank and paint job, to its tucked-underseat exhaust system and handgrip deflectors, the Dorsoduro, more than any bike I’ve ever seen, makes me want to join the resistance. Join the resistance to what? Anything.



Were I to actually take the Dorsoduro into battle, I would quickly realize three problems:
1) The bike doesn’t have a gun holder, standard or optional.
2) The high-performance street tires, which work just fine on pavement, may be a problem in a battle-zone littered with dirt and debris.
3) I promised my mother I wouldn’t die on a motorcycle, and taking one into battle increases those odds considerably.

I think I’ll just settle for the next closest thing, the sprawling, semi-urban streets of Los Angeles. It certainly looks the part, the two-wheeled styling equivalent of a Lamborghini Revénton-meets Mad Max that only an Italian company could pull off. It’s angry, aggressive, edgy, and attractive; on quite a few occasions I found myself leaving Fort Starbucks to find my bike surrounded by inquisitive civilians.

The most frequent question asked, following “What’s an Aprilia?,” was about how it compared to it’s Italian cousin the Ducati Hypermotard. I have never ridden the Hypermotard, so I won’t begin to draw on-road hypotheticals, but after sitting on one in a showroom recently, I will say this. If you’re “American Sized,” like my 6’2”, 240lbs is, the Aprilia is the way to go. It offers a more comfortable seating position, better peg placement, and is about $1,500 less ($10,500 vs. $12,000). If you’re from the other side of the pond or similarly sized, meaning your t-shirts have S or M on the tags, the Ducati is lighter and makes 13 lb/ft more torque (at the expense of 2 fewer horsepower), and has an immediately recognizable name printed on the tank. Also, the Dorsoduro makes its 92 horsepower using a 750cc engine, whereas the Hypermotard requires 1100cc’s to accomplish a similar task, so expect fuel economy to be better on the Dorsoduro. During my two weeks with the bike, I averaged 44.9 mpg in very mixed conditions.

I would buy this bike on sound alone. The engine and exhaust combo, shared with Aprilia’s Shiver and Mana, is like taking a Ferrari 430 Scuderia’s V8 and hacking off two cylinders at the end to make a V-twin. It wails like only an Italian could, and the pops and cracks that emanate from the exhaust while decelerating are the motorcycle equivalent of crack cocaine, it’s that addictive. I always found myself accelerating just a bit more than I normally would, just to hear that sound.




From the rider’s position, the gauge cluster is as simple as can possibly be. A large tachometer is front and center, flanked to one side by a multipuipose LCD screen that reads out speed, engine metrics (including temperature, as I learn later), and ECU mode. The Dorsoduro’s ECU is pre-programmed with three modes: Tour, Sport, and Rain. It didn’t rain while I had the bike, and even if it did, I’d rather ride the bus than ride in it, and I only used Sport mode while in the canyons. That seemed like a good decision, as at less than 8/10ths you really don’t notice the difference, and Tour is fine for everyday use. Sport mode does, however, really bump up the throttle response and aggressiveness of the power delivery, so a more experienced rider may find themself using this mode more often.

The Dorsoduro is a fantastic city bike. It makes power in all the right places, especially the midrange, has a beautifully light and progressive clutch, and a seating position that’s comfortable enough for anyone to ride around all day long and never have any back pain. The suspension absorbs every bump, railroad tie, pothole, and surface change without a hiccup, and I found myself no longer swerving around obstacles, but running over them, just to see how the bike could take it. In case you’re wondering, ‘ol Dorso took it like a champ.

She also passed the canyon test with flying colors. Despite the relatively high center of gravity, the Dorsoduro’s wide handlebars, relatively light weight, willingness to rev, and road tires made an afternoon in the canyons a true pleasure, especially when the pavement got rough in places, as tends to happen in Southern California. Parking at Neptune’s Net on the Pacific Coast Highway, I was met with smiles, nods, and thumbs up from a fleet of Harley Davidson riders, a pleasant surprise.

There are, of course, a few downsides. The shifter works fine while the bike was moving, but it was an endless wrestle to put the bike into Neutral while stopped. Also noticeably absent was any form of storage, as well as the ability to carry a passenger. On two 90+ degree days, the Dorso very nearly overheated while sitting at long red lights. A check of the coolant revealed everything was normal, but it wasn’t happy until we got back moving again.



ABS is the only option, and though my test bike was so equipped, I never found cause to actually try it. The rep told me that more advanced riders would probably opt for a non-ABS model, as it tends to hamper the bike’s off-road ability under aggressive braking, but less experienced riders would appreciate it as a safety measure. I agree.

It’s really a shame that almost no one I spoke with on the street has ever heard of the Dorsoduro, as it is not only a great tool for urban warfare, should one ever spring up in Los Angeles, but also it’s a very versatile, user friendly, fun to ride bike for riders of all skill levels. Sure, the shifter requires some getting used to and it ran a bit hot in traffic, but even a bike this good can’t get over its Italian heritage. And although I never had cause to take the Dorsoduro into battle, for those two weeks, I woke up every morning with a smile on my face for an entirely different reason: I had a motorcycle in my garage that I just couldn’t wait to ride.