Aprilia RST1000 Futura

I must be the most stupid person in the world! I bought my latest bike from

a picture in a magazine. Damn! that’s a nice looking bike I thought when I

saw an Aprilia RST1000 Futura in a bike magazine. “Wish I had one”, and 6

weeks later I had one, a blue one, never saw a colour chart, test rode one,

sat on one or read more than one review. While the cries of pillock, tosser

etc continue, all I can say is….I agree. Now I would never buy a bike

again without trolling through 85 reviews, having at least 2 test rides and

a damn good poke around. But I don’t have to do all this, because right now

I don’t intent to part with my Italian stallion for at least 30,000 miles,

or 2 years at the rate I’m going now.

I don’t have a lot of experience with bikes (no kidding!), I’ve had a

Triumph Thunderbird and a Kawasaki GPZ1100 in my two years of riding so I

can’t talk about torque curves, gear ratio’s and dyno printouts, what I do

know is that it goes and it stops. In fact it goes bloody fast! enough to

push me back along the seat, especially when it’s over 6,000 revs and it

stops plenty fast enough, I pull that lever and never have any worries about

inprinting myself on the lorry in front. I’ve had it up to 140 mph and

that’s about as technical as I’m going to get. I’ve overtaken R1’s on bends

and ‘Busa’s on straights, but I’ve had the favours returned by Fazer 600’s

and Pan Europeans a plenty so I know at my level it’s the rider that makes

the bike not the other way round.

So what more can I tell you about it to fill up 400 words? I bloody like it,

that’s what, I get off the bike, walk away and a quick look back tells me I

made the right choice, I love the single swing arm, the gold discs, angular

shape and even some of the underseat exhaust system. I say some of it

because I am not too sure about the triangular end can, but a company in

Australia are going to send me two end cans for it, all I gotta do is send

them £300 quid and it will look the bee’s knees. Some Futura owners have had

this conversion already and it changes the bike from Captain Sensible to Sid

Viscous in just 3 hours of labour.

In 10 months I’ve been to the Pyranees and Alps on it with no trouble at

all, it’s comfortable for 600 mile days (been there done that), although the

screen could be higher, the tank last longer and have less vibratory(?)

mirrors.

So maybe I’m not so stupid, just bloody lucky, I went for skin deep beauty

(to me..OK!) and found it to be very thick skinned indeed.