Our Bothan spies are hard at work, ahead of this year’s EICMA show, and thus we have another leaked photo for your viewing pleasure. Giving us our first glimpse at the rumored MV Agusta Stradale 800, we can see that Varese is borrowing heavily from Ducati’s playbook.
If the Rivale was MV Agusta’s response to the Ducati Hypermotard, then the Stradale is the company’s riff on the Ducati Hyperstrada, as our photo shows what appears to be a Rivale with bags and a windscreen attached.
MV Agusta has this nasty habit of debuting motorcycles in the autumn trade shows, and then taking a couple years to actually produce the machines for public consumption. Such was the case with the MV Agusta F3, the MV Agusta Rivale, and now with MV Agusta Turismo Veloce.
The Varese company’s challenge to the Ducati Multistrada (which will be a new model for 2015, by the way), the MV Agusta Turismo Veloce builds upon the now exhausted aesthetic of the Italian company, adding a more upright seating position and touring focus to the brand’s lineup.
The new “EVO” style rules for the 2015 World Superbike Championship are having some interesting effects. Honda may or may not finally release its V4 superbike, Yamaha has two versions of its YZF-R1 set to unveil at EICMA, one a homologation special, Ducati has the new 1299 debuting, allegedly with Superleggera innards in the motor, and now we see something from MV Agusta.
A leaked powerpoint slide seems to outline a new model, the MV Agusta F4 RC, which will be the company’s racing platform in WSBK going forth; and unsurprisingly, the racing F4 has many engine modifications made to the “street bike” for homologation purposes (EVO rules don’t allow much engine tuning for WBSK race bikes from stock).
Rumors have been hot and heavy that MV Agusta will announce at EICMA that Mercedes-Benz will become a minority shareholder in the Italian motorcycle company. Those talks of investment have been confirmed by our friends at Canada Moto Guide, however in talking to Giovanni Castiglioni, the young Italian said the deal hasn’t been completed yet.
Getting a chance to bend the ear of Castiglioni at the Dragster RR/Brutale 800 RR launch this weekend, CMG’s Costa Mouzouris was told by Castiglioni that “if it happens, I would be the manager of the year; you can imagine it is a big deal for a small company, family owned, to sell a minority share to a huge company like Mercedes.”
We already brought you the first high-resolution photos of the MV Agusta Brutale Dragster 800 RR (say that three times fast!) yesterday, which were sent to us by our Bothan Spies. In response, MV Agusta has unveiled the Dragster RR and Brutale RR today, ahead of the EICMA show.
Like the updated Brutale 800 RR, the Brutale Dragster 800 RR features a revised 798cc three-cylinder engine, which makes 140hp at the 13,100 rpm, and a very peaky 63 lbs•ft of torque at 10,100 rpm.
Numerous visual cues have been changed, included red-anodized fork tubes, red-painted cylinder heads, and aluminum tubeless wire-spoked wheels. An eight-way adjustable steering damper continues the noticeable changes, to the 370 lbs machine (dry).
Along with the new Dragster RR, MV Agusta has debuted the Brutale RR, ahead of the EICMA show. Like its hot rod cousin, the MV Agusta Brutale 800 RR gets a 15hp increase, which makes for 140hp at the 13,100 rpm peak. A very peaky motor indeed, maximum torque arrives at 10,100 rpm at 63 lbs•ft.
The Brutale RR also features the MVICS 2.0 electronics package, which first debuted on the still unreleased MV Agusta Turismo Veloce. An update to the already robust MVICS package, the key feature in the 2.0 revision is the quickshift operation, both for upshifts and downshifts.
It looks like since the MV Agusta Brutale Dragster 800 RR (its full name) has blown cover, thanks to our Bothan spies, MV Agusta has gone ahead and released a few photos and this video to the press. A longer version of the drag strip video we brought you two weeks ago, this time around we see the Dragster RR in full.
Some seem to love this bike, while others hate it. We certainly agree it looks better in the black variation, than the white, but MV Agusta has no shortage of design prowess — expect this machine to be a stunner in person, when it debuts officially at EICMA.
With upgraded wheels and vibrant paint, how does this 140hp three-cylinder hot rod strike your fancy? Let us know in the comments.
MV Agusta had us guessing as to what the Varese company would be debuting at the upcoming EICMA show, though the latest video from the company seems to clearly show that a Dragster RR will be coming.
A built up version of the Dragster 800, the MV Agusta Dragster RR features Kineo wheels, new paint, and we presume some sort of launch control mechanism.
We expect the MV Agusta Brutale Dragster RR to officially debut a day before EICMA starts, as MV Agusta usually holds a press event on the Monday before the show.
You don’t have to wait that long though, as we have 18 high-resolution photos sent to us by our Bothan Spies, who seem to be busy little Bothans, as our friends at Nieuwsmotor also appear to have received these shots (some different, some the same).
Two weeks ago we showed you the photo that MV Agusta was using to tease its latest model to debut at EICMA. The photo featured Kineo-spoked wheels, and the company’s three-piped exhaust can. This of course left us to speculate that the expensive tubeless wheelset would be attached to either a proper ADV bike from MV Agusta, or some sort of café racer.
A few days later, we found the trademark filings for a “Turismo Leggero” motorcycle, whose name similarity to the MV Agusta Turismo Veloce, made us think our first instincts about that teaser photo were right: this new model was some sort of adventure-touring machine. Well…add another theory to the mix.
Yesterday we speculated that MV Agusta’s new teaser photo could be a more off-road offering of the company’s still unreleased Turismo Veloce multi-tourer. A quick dive through the European trademark filings seems to confirm that notion, as MV Agusta registered the name “Turismo Leggero” just two months ago.
Literally meaning “light touring” in Italian, the name isn’t terribly helpful by itself, though its analogous structure to the Turismo Veloce models does give us some sort of framework. How the new model will be “lighter” in the two-wheeled context remains to be seen, though as many have noted, the bike’s Kineo wheels are certainly a good start.
MV Agusta has a new model it is ready to debut, as the company has begun its marketing hype ahead of next week’s INTERMOT show. A simple email to the press, with a single photo, is the only clue we have of what’s to come, outside of the visual or course, and that the file name of the photo is “worth_waiting.jpg”.
That’s not much to work on, but the photo does give us some clues: a wire-laced rim, s tubeless wheel, s Pirelli Diablo Rosso tire, a single-sided swingarm, and the first tip of what looks like MV Agusta’s three-pipe exhaust (a brighter Photoshopped image is after the jump).
In our minds, this narrows things down to just two possibilities: a completely new café racer styled machine, or a more off-road version of the company’s still unreleased Turismo Veloce ADV-tourer.