Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1127887
VOLUME 56 ISSUE 23 JUNE 11, 2019 P83 speed. It's just a bit more muted now, with Euro 4 compliant silencing. But after tiptoeing aboard the 33.2-in high seat, I discovered a riding stance that's surprisingly well balanced, without excessive weight on my arms and shoulders, even though the quite flat spread of the sport-bike-style bars bolted to the top of the fork legs deliv- ers an inherently inclined wind-cheating posture, with my knees rucked neatly into the sculpted recesses of the 5-gal fuel tank. The new Brutale is improb- ably comfortable for this fast a bike. An objective of speed And fast it is—very, very fast, so much so in fact that the massive Pista Pirelli complex's 2600-ft main straight proved to be too short for me to really rev the new Brutale out in top gear—the best I saw was 233km/h (144 mph) in fourth from a rolling start, with 13,000 rpm showing on the well-designed five- inch TFT dash that's light years better than the small, crowded and mostly illegible previous instrument that MV always fitted. But at that speed the new Brutale stayed totally planted on the asphalt, thanks to the radiator shroud that was added after Gillen's R&D team encountered an 'interesting' problem in early testing. "When we rode the bike for the first time, we discovered that we had the rider completely in the wrong spot," says Brian with a grimace. "From 278 km/h up it was trying to wheelie back- wards, so we had to completely rethink where we were putting the rider on the bike, and how we could hold the front wheel down. We realized we needed to incorporate wings into the design— but it's a naked bike, with minimal bodywork, so how do you do that? But Adrian Morton did another design itera- YOU WANT FAST? HOW'S THIS FOR FAST… A homologated top speed of 188 mph sound— from a naked bike—is very, very impressive. That's thanks to the 208 bhp produced at 13,450 rpm at the crankshaft by the new Brutale's heav- ily revised version of the previous F4 Superbike inline-four motor—yet with 84.81 lb-ft of torque deliv- ered at just 9300 rpm, so with a 4000 rpm span between peak torque and peak power, it promises to be a pretty rideable motorcycle, too. (An optional RC- Project titanium exhaust system extracts 212 hp at 13,600 rpm, but isn't Euro 4 compliant.) These impressive numbers come courtesy of what's essen- tially an all-new motor that's safe to a 14,200 rpm limiter, and has been designed with a focus on reducing friction and enhancing lubrication. Add in a claimed dry weight of 410 lbs thanks partly to copious magnesium covers and titanium bolts, screws and fasteners, as well as carbon-fiber bodywork—such as it is—and on paper at least the 2020-model Brutale 1000 threatens to be a new performance benchmark for the Naked Roadster category. As such, it challenges the current dominance of the 405-lb Aprilia Tuono V4 1100 that nar- rowly out-muscles the MV in mak- ing 88.5 lb-ft of torque at 9000 revs, but comes up short in the horsepower stakes, with a 'mere' 175bhp at 11,000 rpm. Well, everything's relative… Paradoxically, though, at a time when other manufacturers are increasing capacity of their engines (Aprilia and Ducati being the most recent and obvious such examples) to redress the effects of such regulatory hurdles as Euro 4, MV Agusta is travelling in the opposite direction, versus the 1078cc displacement of the its previous range-topping Brutale 1090RR, production of which ended a couple of years ago, without Euro 4 compliance. "You can obtain more power in one of two ways—either with greater displacement, or with extra revs," says Brian Gillen. "But with displacement we'd have had to go even bigger than 1078cc, if we really wanted to get what we were looking for from a performance standpoint. So we chose instead to go with a smaller displacement, but with a higher revving mo- tor—and the result is considerably more horsepower." That new smaller displacement uses the same 79mm bore as before, but with the stroke short- ened from 55mm to 50.9mm to measure 998cc. This reflects MV's objective in redesigning the engine, which is basically to pro- ductionize what the next genera- tion F4 Superbike engine would have been. 208 hp on tap. In a naked bike motor. Wow.