The promo video for the new Aprilia Tuareg 660 opens with sunrise shots of camel driving Touareg tribespeople in the Sahara Desert, then quickly cuts to a bloke hooning the new bike along a deserted Sardinian beach. The visual message is that you don’t need to take the new Aprilia adventure twin to the Sahara to enjoy its light and frisky dynamic. The bike will make any ride an event, even if it’s just popping down to the shops to get the milk. Via the beach.
The 660 will even impress a jaded journo on their 125th junket judging by the positive post-ride feedback I found myself gushing afterwards. Which is surprising because I don’t usually instantly bond with powerful adventure bikes like this.
Several things made the saddle of the Tuareg 660 a happy place for me. The engine arguably has more charisma than any other parallel twin in bikedom, and the adjustable throttle response is always perfectly metered throughout the four riding modes. And oh, what an inspiring call to action it makes: think rev-happy rorty twin burning pure nitromethane with lots of compression.
Then there’s the ergonomics: these days I don’t feel all that enthusiastic about riding bikes with seat heights higher than 830mm due to only being able to reach terra firma while on the tippy toes of a single foot. On paper, the 860mm tall seat of the Aprilia should be a bridge 30mm too far for me. Yet I instantly found that the bike offered some innovative solutions to allow me to comfortably get a foot down when I needed to.
The Tuareg’s seat is sculpted so that it’s narrow where the upper thighs rest, then flattens out and becomes wider further towards the rear of the bike. The narrow front section not only gives the legs a straighter and shorter path when dabbing a foot, it also makes clenching the mid-section of bike with your knees feel natural when standing up. Yet despite the seat looking more like a proper dirtbike’s pew, it still manages to feel comfortable throughout this admittedly short initial ride.
The Tuareg’s 660cc parallel twin is shared with the RS660 middleweight sportsbike and its naked streetbike sibling, the Tuono 660. In those pure road-going forms, it develops healthy maximum outputs of 100bhp and 70Nm of riding force. Changes to the cam-timing and engine management, and the requisite new high-mounted exhaust system for Tuareg duty, prune the power peak to 80bhp but deliver the same 70Nm of peak torque 2000rpm earlier in the rev range.
It would be a mistake to think Aprilia has tamed this little beast of an engine in the interest of increased tractability, however. By producing more grunt at the engine speeds we use most on the street, the Tuareg is likely to be quicker out of the blocks than the RS and the Tuono.
Another change to the engine is a shallower oil sump that preserves ground clearance, despite Aprilia fitting the Tuareg with Kayaba fully-adjustable suspension capable of plushly controlling 240mm of wheel travel at either end of the bike. The new sump comes protected by a generously sized metal bash plate should the generous under-engine clearance no longer be enough out on the trail.
Despite the heavy metal engine protector, the 43mm thick long travel forks, the industrial strength aluminum swingarm, more raked out beefier frame, and a wheelbase that is 155mm longer than the sportsbike’s, the Tuareg compares pretty favourably with the RS 660 when placed on the scales. Dry weight of the do-it-all adventurer is 187kg, just 18kg more than one of the lightest sportsbikes ever made. The difference in the wet weight of the two Aprilia 660s blows out to 21kg, due to the larger 18-litre fuel tank of the all-terrain tourer (RS 660 tank: 15 litres). Like the seat, the tank is sculpted to permit ease of movement for the rider. Best of all the engine revisions have made the Tuareg version of the 660 more frugal with fuel, and the 18-litre reservoir allows the bike to roam for 450km before requiring a refill.
What didn’t I like about the $21,490 Tuareg 660? Only that there wasn’t a third “6” in the model nomenclature in place of the “0”. The engine might be modest in capacity, but it really is a beast.
