Aprilia Dorsoduro 1200 - Maxi Motard | First Ride

The engine is the main event as far as I'm concerned on the Dorsoduro, with a fluid, torquey power delivery that'll let you pull away from as low as 1500 rpm on part throttle, with barely a touch of the smooth-action gear lever before it hits its stride from 3000 rpm upwards. The six-speed gearbox has a clean, crisp, shift action with well-chosen ratios. Once on the move you don't need to worry about using the clutch to change gear in either direction, so perfectly precise and positive is the shift action. When you do ever use it, the light-action clutch is smooth and predictable in its bite, but in fact you don't need to work it very hard to get meaningful motion, with the Dorsoduro accelerating wide open without transmission snatch from 3000 rpm all the way to the 9500-rpm rev limiter. But in fact, you should already have changed gear by then, because the Dorsoduro's happy zone is from 4000 rpm up to the seven-grand mark, complementing the extremely flat torque curve. While the counterbalancer-free motor is very smooth low down, there's some residual vibration through the footrests from just under 4500 rpm, all the way to 8500 revs, but only under load, so cruising a highway at 75 mph/4500 rpm on part throttle thankfully isn't affected.

The Dorsoduro's 1200cc V-twin powerplant shares little with either the 750cc Shiver/Dorsoduro engine or the 850cc Mana engine. The 1200 is tilted 30 degrees rearward in the chassis compared to a Ducati L-twin layout, and bore and stroke are identical to the 1198R at 106 x 67.8mm. Note dual-plug cylinder heads and the hybrid gear/chain cam-drive system that is similar to the 750's. The exhaust cam timing is different between the two cylinders to account for different exhaust pipe lengths.

There are three levels of traction control (four, if you include switching it off altogether), each of which includes anti-wheelie control, although the whole system isn't as sophisticated as the one fitted to the RSV4 APRC, since only comparative wheel speed sensors are employed on the Dorsoduro and not the RSV4's inertia sensor and more sophisticated programming. And unlike the APRC, you can't swap between traction control settings on the go. Of the three settings, Three is the most intrusive, and selecting it to ride hard on those slippery Spanish roads soon had the system cutting in to reduce power when the rear Pirelli started to slide. At the other end of the scale, level One had much less effect, with enough power still maintained to get the rear wheel sliding on the Sport engine map when opening the throttle out of a slow turn. Two was the best, delivering confidence via a sense of control - but while not having the RSV4 system's range of adjustment, the TC in the Dorsoduro works just as effectively yet surreptitiously as the one in the V4 race replica. And forget about wheelying this bike, unless you cheat and launch it over the brow of a hill.

The ABS worked really well, too, and there were lots of chances to evaluate it on those slick surfaces where I'd otherwise have been pretty nervous about using the front brakes to anything like their full potential - and they do work well, with good response thanks also to the braided metal brake lines that are standard. I didn't get the rear wheel chattering even under the hardest of stops for a downhill hairpin, despite the fact there's no slipper clutch fitted . And in spite of the steering geometry's hefty trail, the Dorsoduro didn't sit up and head for the haystacks if I took an extra handful of front brake leaned over in a turn. The Aprilia held its line well under high speed braking, plus it tracked straight and true even at speeds of 125 mph and more taking the autopista back to the Jerez GP circuit. It's responsive but composed - there's no sign of nervousness, thanks presumably to that conservative steering geometry.

But there were definitely moments when the bike's inherent stability was too much of a good thing. With such a long wheelbase this will always be a slow-steering bike, but throw in extra weight, a pretty tall ride height, the raked-out fork angle and the large amount of trail, and now the steering is heavy as well as slow. The Sachs suspension was set up quite a bit stiffer than on the 750 Dorsoduro with the same setup, though here the fully adjustable fork and shock would presumably let you work round that. Still, you'd never guess that offset Sachs rear shock was devoid of any link, for its progressivity and compliance are excellent. The Dorsoduro was lots of fun to ride through a succession of hillside hairpins or tight, twisty turns, where the balanced feel to the bike as a whole was readily apparent.

Though undoubtedly still a work in progress in terms of smoothing off some rough edges, the Dorsoduro 1200 is one more block in the building set that Piaggio is committed to constructing to make Aprilia great again at a world level.