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/128218
Aprilia RSV Mille R Edwards By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS By FOTO MILAGRO hen Aprilia succeeded in capturing the signature of reigning two-time World Superbike Champion Colin Edwards on a contract to race its promising but unproven threecylinder MotoGP bike in 2003, it was probably just a matter of time before it sold its street customers, who subsidize this sporting activity at the sales counter, a sportbike at least notionaJJy linked to Cool Col's presence in the Italian firm's GP squad. But rather than wait till the end of the tall Texan's debut season aboard the RS Cube triple before launching a racer-with-lights street version of what he obviously hopes by then will be a race-winning motorcycle, Aprilia boss Ivano Beggio has opted to get his value up front from all those millions of Euro-dollars he had to pay Colin to give Honda the heave-ho and switch to Italy's most successful Grand Prix racing team of the past decade. So, instead of that notional 2004-year street-legal RS Cube (well, we can all dream!), complete with pneumatic valve gear and the bestsounding exhaust note since Ago last raced an MV Agusta in anger, Aprilia has instead launched a power-up version of its revised 2003-model RSV Mille R 50-degree V -twin sportbike with Colin's autograph on each side of the fuel tank. This is known within the company as "La Edwards" - not in recognition of Colin's lovely wife Alyssia, but on account of being painted up to look like a butch version of the smaller MotoGP triple in the form Colin took to a competitive sixth place in the opening GP of the season at Suzuka. The RSV Mille R Edwards is emblazoned with the same sponsorship decals - including the big ones on each side of the fairing, from Alice. That's the Italian phone company's internet server, not a Latin translation of the real La Edwards' Christian name, though you'll have to take my word for that because it seems "Ah-Iee-chay" didn't front up enough cash in sponsorship funds to ensure its name was actually printed io full on the fairing of the road bike, a pair of carbon extraction radiator W 44 JUNE 1 1, 2003' cue I ... ducts which remain unpainted, seemingly just to do a good job of breaking up the Wonderland logo... Actually, seeing La Edwards (bike, not babe!) brooding menacingly in Pit Lane at Monza while awaiting my pleasure for a day of fast lapping around II Autodromo, underlines that this has by Aprilia's high standards a rather disappointing appearance. Black-painted and bitty, it looks like a standard RSV-R with a couple more stickers and a lower tail, whereas I know I wasn't alone in looking forward to seeing it clothed in the fabun e vv s lous Lone Star livery in which Colin's MotoGP race bike was adorned, Texas-style, for preseason testing. What a missed opportunity - even if Aprilia executives claim it was their intention all along to offer the bike in this paint scheme until talked out of doing so by their Italian dealers, who insisted the bike wouldn't sell well looking like that. Leaving aside the question of whether or not such reservations have any Iraqi connotations, all I'll say is that for once it seems the Latin idea of visual chic has taken a wrong turn. Paint it Texas-style, amici, then get ready to step up production levels to meet demand of what is not, Aprilia stresses, a limited-edition model like the lower-spec Haga Replica RSV-R from a year ago - they'll build as many as there's a demand for. Anyway, La Haga was indeed a cosmetic copy of the bike Nori-chan raced in World Superbike last season, whereas the closest Colin has ever gotten to riding an Aprilia Mille would be the time Haga performed one of his trademark back-ins to a turn right in front of the Castrol Honda's front