The Aprilia RSV4 is a super bike manufactured by Aprilia

Aprilia

Aprilia is an Italian motorcycle company, one of the seven marques owned by Piaggio, the world's fourth largest motorcycle manufacturer.Aprilia started as a scooter manufacturer, but has more recently come to be known for its race-winning sportbikes...

. The RSV4 is Aprilia’s flagship model. Aprilia offers two models of the bike: the RSV4 Factory and RSV4 R.

Production of the motorcycle began in 2008.
The motorcycle was unveiled on February 22, 2008, at the International Piaggio Group Convention in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, Italy. It is powered by a 65-degree 999.6 cc V-4

V4 engine

A V4 engine is a V form engine with four cylinders and three main bearings.-Automobile use:Lancia produced several narrow-angle V4 engines from the 1920s through 1960s for cars like the Lambda, Augusta, Artena, Aprilia, Ardea, Appia, and Fulvia....

 engine, the company's first production four-cylinder engine.
Aprilia claims that the new engine was designed specifically for superbike racing

Superbike racing

Superbike racing is a category of motorcycle racing that employs modified production motorcycles. Superbike World Championship is the international superbike championship, and national superbike championships are held in many countries as well, including the United Kingdom, the United States,...

 and that the engine will put over 200 hp in race configuration.

Aprilia launched the bike to race in the 2009 Superbike World Championship season

2009 Superbike World Championship season

The 2009 Superbike World Championship season was the 22nd season of the Superbike World Championship. It was the second season in which HANNspree had been the title sponsor of the championship...

.

Racing

In 2009, its first full season of World Superbike racing, Max Biaggi

Max Biaggi

Massimiliano "Max" Biaggi is an Italian motorcycle racer and winner of the 2010 World Superbike Championship. Throughout this racing career, he has won the 250cc World Championship four times, and finished as runner-up in both the 500cc and MotoGP championships...

 aboard the RSV4 reached the podium 9 times, and won one race at the Brno Circuit. Aprilia factory teammate Shinya Nakano

Shinya Nakano

is a retired Japanese Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Superbike rider. He is not related to the former Formula One racer Shinji Nakano.-Early years:...

 ended the season in 14th place.

Biaggi won the championship in 2010, and contracted to race the bike for another two seasons, citing his positive experience with the team and development of the bike into a successful racer and, despite his age, wanting to continue with the momentum they had built up.

The Aprilia RSV4 is available as a customer specified race bike from the factory as a Max Biaggi replica.

External links

• RSV4 website
• Aprilia RSV at the Open Directory Project
  Open Directory Project
  The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...