Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

four. Both will feature an electric starter instead of the conventional kick-starter system, wh ich has been eliminated completely to offset the weight of having both systems in place. In the early stages of the project, it was planned to use Yamaha engines fo r a certain amou nt of time, but then the idea of producing a completely Ita lian mac hine prevailed . The eng ines are now bei ng built at the Moto G uzz i facility, which is part of the Aprilia Group. The electronic systems for the SXV 4 .S were developed w ith the sup' port of Aprilia's MotoG P department, and most of the electronics (fue l injec tion for example) are managed by the same system used on the GP I bikes Colin Edwards and Noriyuki Haga . Bo th the motocross and the supermoto models will undergo su bstantial re visions tha t soon will provide more re me m03e s (rom tile still- - --' early prototype that you see here. For instance, the han dlebar console currently used is needed on ly in the data acquisition process. It won't be used in the future . The bike project started in October '02 and was take n care of and built in record time by experienced former Husqvarna chief engineer, Ampelio Macchi , who, after leaving Husqvarna, created an R&D structure called Motocross Company based near Varese in Northern Italy. Macchi gave shape to the courageous idea of Aprilia's president Ivano Beggio of creating something radically new, innovative and drastically advanced fo r the off-road un i- verse. While its first racing steps were taken in supermoto (a segment Aprilia will continue to pursue with much interest), the 2004 program will be really busy as Aprilia goes after World Supermoto an d World Motocross championships. And then around September of 2004, the 2005 production models should be ready to be marketed. The Aprilia V-twin pr ograms wi ll definitely be worth kee ping a n eye o n. eN Interview Aprilia Off-Road Director Ennio Marchesin Q T he 4.5 had an unexpected and unannounced early debut. What was the reason behind this decision? A Well, first of all we came to Belgium with our test team .follco mposed of our crew that has followed every evolutionary step of our new off-road bike. So since we were pretty satisfied with our progress, we dec ided to surprise everybody and enter a couple of races a lot earlier than inltially planned. We firstly had announced the bike officially at the Bologna Motor Show in December. But when we showed the engine at the Milan Show, the public interest grew rapidly, so we dec ided to give them a taste. From there we also decided to use the races as public testing sessions , taking advantage of them to also show the state-ofthe-art levels reached by Aprilia. At the first race we worked a lot on the data acquisition process, which is someth ing completely new for off- road . But also we heard words coming from several sources stating that our project didn't actually exist . He re we are, and if anyone still has reason to doubt us now, in 2004 we'll be ready to enter the Supermoto and Motocross World Championships with a complete lineup . What'S the timeline of the SXV 4.5, from the moment it was decided to take off with the project? A The idea started from Aprilia's president, Mr. Beggio, Hand Motocross Company's Mr. Macchi. Mr. Beggio's goal was to draw new vitality into the off-road segment and make Aprilia's mark with something totally innovative that would shock the market. Mr. Macchi agreed, and one of the points that came up was that in order to bring a drastic innovation, the creation of a compact two-cylinder power unit was the first direction to take. Making another mo nocylinder Q would have meant being just another of the other 20 slngleunit models on the marl

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