Meet Angelina, my new Italian sweetheart! It’s a 2015 Aprilia Shiver 750 (w/ABS) at around 14000km’s. So this’ll be my first V-Twin, but second 750 after owning a ZXR750 for a short time. I bought Angelina mainly due to the superb stock exhaust sound at idle and on the overrun (*BRAAAP! Pop, pop pop...*), but also that I’ve never owned a middleweight naked bike nor an Italian V-Twin either. It was too good of a deal to pass up.
On SPORT mode you get full instant power that’s enough to lose you licence easily, although is quite snatchy down low response wise. Yet TOUR mode is the same power just with a slower response, so much better around town. It also handles fine and is very stable, plus she comes standard with braided brake lines, adjustable levers and can set a lap timer on the LCD dash, which is nice...
Yes I know Italian stuff is known for their, shall we say sexy but crazy girlfriend tendencies, but I’m hopeful that’s more about Italian bikes before the early 2000's... Just don’t lose the spare key on this one, because if the standard immobiliser goes on and you forgot the personal key code (which you need both keys to reset for you), my mechanic says its $2500 AUD bill right there, OUCH....
I was thinking about supersport 600's/1000's, Daytona 675's, Ducati 749/848's, GSXR750's. Some maintenance before hand would’ve been needed on all of them, plus the ongoing running costs would’ve been higher, though I was ok with that. But since I’m just under 25, the deal breaker was insurance. They’re more expensive or impossible to insure for some models here in Australia, for anything relatively recent sportbike wise. Sooooo since I’ve never owned a middleweight naked bike, thought why not?
Angelina’s gonna be my 1 and only bike to use for everything, so will try to sell Kimberly (my 2017 KTM RC390) or just trade her in. Sad times....