How do you make an Aprilia RSV4 more iconic? Style it into an Aprilia RS250…
Yearning for the days of clean design and two-stroke harmony? Well, it turns out the Aprilia RSV4 can look even more exotic with an Aprilia RS250 makeover
Few motorcycle designs are surely as timeless as the Aprilia RS250.
The ultimate ‘pocket rocket’ two-stroke of the 90s, the RS250 was the Ferrari of low capacity, low weight, high thrills sportsbike with its shrill, free-revving nature inspired by the machines raced by the likes of Valentino Rossi and Max Biaggi in the 250GP World Championship.
Today we still have the RS 125 available as the modern-day version, but while it is a scaled down version of the firm’s full fat Aprilia RSV4 sportsbike, we won’t lie, it lacks the same mystique and fun factor of its spiritual predecessors.
Besides, as fun as 250s are, when you become a proper adult and start dabbling in big bikes, really the best you can buy is the RSV4 which, despite its advancing age, remains the elite sportsbike option that’ll thrill a minute both on the road and on the track.
However, if that too is just a bit ‘millennium generic’ then you could always do what French blogger Le Week-end De Course has done by taking his RSV4 and giving it a full retro makeover in tribute to the original RS250.
Indeed, while 250s of the 90s were often styled to look unmistakable to their larger capacity brothers - if you squinted, anyway - on this occasion we’re doing the opposite by being transported back to those wispy two-stroke times.
While the overall look is helped by being decked out in traditional Aprilia black and red - a colourway and typeface that hasn’t changed over the decades - this RSV4 still looks every inch the 90s bad boy with its re-profiled curved nose and chunky single unit headlamp.
It also features a smoothed off fairing and bubbled rear tail-fin which, though perhaps not as efficient aerodynamically than the original RSV4’s wings and fins, give it a cleaner, more uncluttered appearance that makes us yearn for the days when design was all about simple, stylish lines, rather than slashes, cuts and appendages to pin forces down.
It also makes us think sportsbike manufacturers should treat us with some official retro reboot models… are you listening, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Honda?!
