Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz introduce the "Faux-cati" in Knight and Day — Autoblog

Much more than a brief glance at this Hyper will reveal that, unless your name is Tom Cruise, the chances of getting your hands on one like the bike from the movie may be only slightly better than Stanley McCrystal's hopes to spend fourth of July with the Obamas. What we have here folks is a genuine Faux-cati.

So just what the heck is this creation, and more importantly, why? A close look at the two-sided swing-arm, the single front brake rotor and silver forks would immediately tip us off to the bikes real identity... its an Aprilia SXV. Well fine, it was all of that stuff, and the fact that it says Aprilia on the side of the motor. Certainly, a heck of a lot of time and effort went into making this Aprilia look like a Ducati. Why though would such an elaborate transformation take place?

We can only assume that girth was the number one factor. The extra hundred-plus pounds of the real Ducati must have been too much – even for a super cool action star with great hair – to pull off.

 

He's got a number of Ducs, including quite a collection of SBKs.

As this is apparently a film production shot, it's obviously a custom creation designed to look like the "poster" bike, and built to take considerably more abuse, and/or cost a lot less when it goes bye-bye.

 

Film production companies do this all the time. For the dirt road scenes in Torque they outfitted KTM Dukes to look like GSX-Rs and Kawis. That SXV weighs probably half as much as a Hypermotard and will be far easier to handle both offroad and doing stunts.

Tom has some absolutely killer Ducs and rents out Willow Springs for private trackdays.

 

So they wanted Tom to look bigger and placed him on a smaller bike????

 

It's a bike that weighs half as much, much more nimble, easier to wheelie, slide, toss around. The only car analogy I can think of is like putting Viper bodywork on an Elise...

 

Yeah, it's just an Aprilia SXV disguised as a Hyper. It's lighter and has actual off-road suspension, was used for the jumps and whatnot.

 

That's crazy - what about the Mission Impossible Speed Triple? Was that Buell Blast or something?

 

Loser who wrote the article needs to get a life.

 

I dunno, man. I think it's funny - like on Night Court (80's show) when they made all the office furniture 7/8th scale to make the actors look taller? That was crazy!

 

hollywood magic?
I wonder if his loyalty to the brand had anything to do with it? I remember him being on the list with Brad Pitt, Michael Jordan, etc. to get the first US bound Desmo's