While at the Long Beach motorcycle show earlier this month, MD took the time to go do what all motorcycle enthusiasts do — check out the new, two-wheeled hardware from all the manufacturers, and imagine this trick stuff sitting in our garage. Along with the new bikes, sometimes there are significant people present, people who make the motorcycles we ride, and a difference in our sport. Thanks to Aprilia USA’s “voice behind the curtain”, Robert Pandya, we got some time to speak with the man whose most recent project has brought the company some positive attention, Klaus Nennewitz. Klaus is an Aprilia design engineer. Here’s what he had to say.
MD: Klaus, How long have you worked with the company?
KN: I’m with Aprilia since generally 1994. Before that I worked for one year in an engineering company in Bologna. We were developing scooters. Before that during my study — my university period — I had also an experience with ATK in the USA.
MD: When you were with ATK did you do the same sort of design engineering with that company?
KN: Yes, and I was also doing some desert races like the Baja 500 in 1991. That’s twelve years from now almost.
MD: So you did the Baja as a rider?
KN: Yes, as a rider.
MD: I guess that gives you a unique perspective on the products that you design and how they operate?
KN: Absolutely, I mean for me the most important thing is to ride bikes, any kind of bikes, starting from scooters to big touring bikes to cruisers to sport bikes, I think it’s absolutely necessary for this kind of work. I mean it’s the fun part of the work, but it’s really fundamental and extremely important to ride bikes to understand them, to take them home into your garage to take them apart, so that has always been a part of my work which I like most, and it’s extremely important, yes, absolutely.
MD: So you’re a true enthusiast, and it seems that how you approach engineering and the motorcycling sport in general you fit in well with the Aprilia company philosophy.
KN: Absolutely, because Aprilia was a bicycle manufacturer right after the 2nd World War, starting in the ’50s. In 1969, the son of the owner of the company — the son’s name is Mr. Ivano Beggio, who is today our president — he started making small size motorcycles, 50cc. He started in the off-road segment and what he did is he surrounded himself with really — I don’t know if the word is right — passionate people that rode motorcycles right from the beginning and the company always grew with this kind of people so there’s always been a lot of passion and active motorcycle riding involved in the structure of Aprilia — with the people of Aprilia. I would say this is really fundamental and probably one of our characteristics of a small but very dedicated motorcycle company.
MD: Aprilia seems like a family. When I think of Aprilia, I don’t think of corporate board rooms and hierarchies of leadership and all that. What I see with Aprilia is some guys getting together at a restaurant, talking about a new design, maybe ideas for a new motorcycle. Is that kind of how it operates for you guys?
KN: How can I put that, it’s a very open minded structure and organization. It’s part of the Italian culture. You know, Italian culture means communication always, anytime about anything. So many of the decisions are not really taken in meetings with the top managers, but just — yeah, as you said — in conversations, maybe at dinner or at lunch, new ideas come up. We have a pretty good organization. We have a sophisticated and thorough development process. We have to go through certain gateway meetings during the arch of the project, which means there is a gateway meeting where you have to certify the functioning of the bike on the road. There is another gateway meeting where you have to check the financial situation of the project. So this is all very well organized and gives good control of every single step of the development process. The ideas, the new ideas or the — how can you say — the new projects, new bikes, come up just in everyday communication and everyday, I wouldn’t say hang out, but “ride out” or things like that, yes.
MD: So it’s kind of like, “Hey, I thought of this.” or “What about that?” and a couple of other people say “Hey, yeah, that sounds like a cool ideal. Let’s give it a try.”
KN: Yes, as I said before, our organization is very open, so really a designer from the technical office or from the design office can bring his idea to the technical director or even to the president of the company. We’re all constantly involved together. We always see each other every day, so it’s really easy to bring on new ideas and work on them together. It’s a really nice, how can you say, atmosphere, absolutely.
MD: Do you do market surveys? Do you poll enthusiasts in different countries, to figure out what sort of motorcycle might best fit their needs?
KN: Yes, absolutely. That’s another very important part of this whole work, and we are always present at the most important motorcycle shows. We go very often in Europe to motorcycle rallies in all the countries — England, France, Germany — well our most important markets are Italy, Germany, France and now, America. So we are really looking very well on these markets and have market surveys, analyze the numbers, the sales trends. So this is, yes, this is part of our work.
MD: The Aprilia line is diversifying more every day, but a lot of it is based in Aprilia’s roadracing roots. Does the technology trickle down so to speak from the racing effort to the street bike?
KN: Yes, there’s a pretty strong cooperation between racing and production development. For example, the whole aluminum frame technology on our road bikes was developed together with the racing department at the beginning of the ’90s. First we started with the 125cc that had a cast aluminum frame, and then the 250cc frame which was a real replica frame. The RS 250 road bike was a real replica frame of the, in those years, GP bike, 250. So there has been a real strong collaboration. In the last years, the technology spread more or less — the racing bikes were always more sophisticated, so the corporation today is more or less limited — no, not limited, but there is a strong cooperation on the electronics field. For example, data recording. We have data recording systems on our road bikes production during the development, and there is a strong cooperation with fuel injection systems, electronics, suspension.
MD: With the RS Cube project improving the new race bike and Colin Edwards giving you input for development, can we expect to see any of the technologies offered by this motorcycle on street bikes any time soon?
KN: That’s not really — maybe it’s not my — how can you say — I’m not authorized to respond to this, but because it’s real — it’s the biggest project at Aprilia right now. The strategy from racing, and for the, let’s say for the most important bikes is in the hands of our board of directors so I think sooner or later of course we will get something from the GP1 bike on all production bikes. I would say so, but we have to wait a little.
MD: Going back to your Pegaso project; was this your first project that you worked on with Aprilia?
KN: No, I started in 1994 actually as a technical designer in the technical office. I worked on the RS 250 road bike, on the RX125 enduro bike, but then the Pegaso 650 that’s the ’97 year model was my first project as a project leader.
MD: What inspired this design? Was it an internal company vision, or was it an outside market demand?
KN: It was an outside market demand because at the whole rise of the enduro bikes in Europe changed at the beginning of the ’90s. You know, the Paris Dakar was pulling really strong in the ’80s, and we had all this Paris Dakar race replica enduros. Like the old Africa twin was the most important one of these bikes. Or the Yamaha Super Tenere 750. I don’t know if you have that in the U.S. So, the manufacturers tried to make replica bikes of these big enduro bikes, but more road oriented. So this was really a strong market trend at the beginning of the ’90s, and we were just following this because we had already an experience in 600cc single-cylinder four-stroke bikes that used the old Rotax 600cc engine, so we made the Pegaso — it was first made for the ’91 model year. This bike followed the trend of the Paris Dakar bikes for the road.
MD: So after the Pegaso, we now see the CapoNord — is the CapoNord an evolution of that project?
KN: No, not really. The CapoNord is a project all on its own. During the years, those big enduro bikes have always — their evolution was more towards road use. The CapoNord is an interpretation of Aprilia’s technology and capability for a big off and on road motorcycle. Whereas, let’s say, since one or two years, the trend for this bike is going towards more off-road orientated. So it’s a market that’s always changing, and that’s something that we’ve also observed. Certain market trends always come back, let’s say, at the distance of ten, fifteen years, so it’s always an up and down — like now, we have street orientated enduro bikes, then again off-road orientated, and maybe five or ten years later they go back towards the off-road. Maybe now there’s a certain inversion of that street trend. The bikes go back to the off-road segment.
MD: Your next project that you worked on as project leader was the Aprilia Falco. How did that come about? Did you experience any difficulties in developing the bike?
KN: Well, we presented the RSV Mille in 1997 and started selling it in early 1998 and we observed a certain trend for less extreme sport bikes in those years. Our aim was to offer the chassis and the engine qualities of the RSV in a more comfortable package. We’re talking about the years ’96, ’97 when many competitors offered bikes in this segment — let’s call it sport light segment — 1000cc sport bikes, twin cylinder bikes, but the motorcycle user is very traditional, at least in Europe, and in those years we were mainly focusing on the European market. So the European motorcycle client wants more — wants his bike very clearly defined; he wants a superbike, a racing bike or he wants a touring bike. The Falco tried to close that gap, but maybe it wasn’t understood quite as well as we thought. It was too much the combination of those two things. In those years it wasn’t really understood in Europe. The difficulties — honestly, no there weren’t any big difficulties because we had so much experience already with the development of the RSV1000, so when we started the Falco, we knew exactly what we wanted and how we had to do it, like frame lay-out, chassis set-up, suspension, brakes. So, from that point of view, it was really — it wasn’t very difficult. The design part of it was pretty challenging, but apart from that — the bike was a nice project and we won also the motorcycle of the year in Germany in 1999 in the touring segment.
MD: Onto your next, and your newest, project — it’s getting a lot of attention, a lot of excitement; the Aprilia Touno. You have an R version, with lots of carbon fiber, upgraded suspension with Ohlins forks and shock, and you have a more standard-equipped version for, we’ll say for the masses, those who cannot afford the “R” model. What inspired this bike, and what was the company attitude towards producing this street fighter model?
KN: Well, it was about time for Aprilia to enter into the naked bike segments, and we’d been thinking about that for a long time, but we were just too busy doing other projects so we couldn’t do everything together in the same period. We had to do the RSV, we made the CapoNord, we made the Futura and the Falco. Once we had finished those projects it was about time for us to enter in the market segments of the naked bikes. That is always growing, especially in Europe. We’d been thinking about that for a long time, but in the end we came up with a decision to make this naked bike starting from the RSV Mille because the RSV Mille is our most successful bike. It’s our flag ship that expresses very well our capacities and our philosophies regarding motorcycles — that means racing style — that’s the Aprilia image. So we knew we had to start from this bike to make a successful naked bike and the idea came up in September last year. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve told you already, I remember because we had a decisive meeting about this project on September 12, and September 11 we were preparing for that meeting — it was a real important meeting, and for us it was just — I mean everything went down on the 11th and on the 12th of September, so the bike was born in very difficult circumstances, but the outcome was very nice. Basically we kicked off the project at the end of September, Our designers started to work at the beginning of November, and we presented the bike at the Bologna Motor Show, which is an annual motorcycle show that is very important in Italy. First we actually were not extremely sure about its success — hardly anybody took notice of it because it was — maybe they didn’t believe in Aprilia making a naked bike of this kind. But the few journalists we talked to gave us positive signals about this kind of bike, so we were really sure about its success. We started to develop it in January of this year, and the bike went into production in April. We made 200 numbered bikes. This bike is supposed to express our — it’s an expression of our capability — it should represent our technical and styling capabilities. The target of the project was to make the best naked bike for road use, not race track use, but road use. That was really like on top of the input, there was this sentence — the bike has to be the best for regular road use. At this point, we hadn’t decided yet if we were going to make a normal version of the Touno, but the immediate success of this bike — we sold the 200 units immediately, and maybe we should have made some more — the immediate success of that bike convinced us to make the base version of the Touno. We started with this after the production start of the Touno R, that means May, and the base model Touno at the production at the beginning of October.
MD: It’s a very exciting bike. Looking at it and comparing it to a Mille without the fairing, it seems that a lot of the hardware from the Mille survived intact. Were the motor specifications, or anything like that changed to fit the Touno?
KN: Okay, the hardware of the bike is basically the same as on the RSV Mille. So on the Touno R we have forged aluminum wheels, Ohlins suspension, Brembo four-piston calipers on the front wheel. The frame is the same for all three models. RSV, Touno R and Touno base version. The engine is basically the same — we just had to make a different fuel injection mapping to make the Touno smoother at low RPM. We understood that this bike, for normal road use, must be very easy to ride and also for less experienced riders the Touno, the base version, has to give immediate confidence and the maximum of security one can expect on such a motorcycle. That means smooth power curves, smooth power delivery. We worked quite a lot on that — on the mapping of the fuel injection. That’s it basically. We re-did the whole fairing. That little fairing is all that’s left. We did some tests in the wind tunnel with the Touno, so the front fairing is really not just thrown on there. If you check out the position of the turn signals, there’s a reason for that because they are in front of your hands, and that really gives a certain protection for your arm and to your hands on the bike. So, this way, you can really travel with that bike in a normal, upright position, at speeds up to 100 mph, as we can do in Europe, of course. You can go fast just tucking down a little bit. So, it offers the best compromise between the style of the naked bike and aerodynamic protection.
MD: In the company’s initial test ride of the Touno, what were the test rider’s reactions when they came back from a ride?
KN: [laughing] It’s really funny because we did the first tests on this bike before Christmas, 2001, and as we were building the prototype in the R&D our test riders were walking around and just looking — everybody was really curious about that bike, to understand if something like this could work. I have to admit, me, myself, I was very curious to understand that the bike would go straight at speeds of about 200 kilometers per hour — that is what, about 120 miles per hour? We did the first test right before Christmas, and the result was marvelous. It was great because the test riders came back and said okay, just leave it like this. We had to do one change — that was to move forward the handlebars about 3/4th of an inch. But that was it. For the rest of it, the bike was perfect like this, and they loved it and everybody was really happy because finally it was a possibility to take advantage of the chassis of the RSV superbike in a normal and a comfortable riding position. We were really fighting for that bike in R&D. Everybody wanted to try it on the weekend. It was really nice. It was a very satisfying project. Absolutely.
MD: Well, you know you can’t rest on your laurels. What’s in the future for you? Have you talked much about future projects? Any new ideas coming over the horizon that you can mention?
KN: Well, you know we are not just Aprilia any more. Now we are a big motorcycle group — Moto Guzzi, Laverda and Aprilia is one thing now. It is owned by the same person, by Mr. Ivano Beggio. At Intermot in September in Munich, Germany, at the German Motorcycle Show, we presented three new projects from Moto Guzzi which is the Breva 750, which is considered to be an entry level bike. We are very much aiming at the female motorcycle rider. Then we have the MGS 01, which is a Moto Guzzi sport bike. And we have the Griso 1000, which is a Moto Guzzi naked bike. So the Breva will end up in production in Spring time 2003, and the other two bikes will follow. So these are new projects we are working on very hard. Then Laverda, we have just presented at the Bologna Motorcycle Show, the new Laverda FSC1000 that, as I have understood it, will be produced in a limited quantity of 50 bikes and the production, the base version, will follow I think one year later. So from this point of view, we are really busy, we have a lot of new projects as far as Aprilia is concerned. Of course I can’t talk about new projects, but one thing is for sure, the Aprilia image will always be linked to racing, so for sure we will continue with this philosophy. To make Aprilia bikes that have a strong racing appeal, strong sport appeal. That’s pretty much it. I can’t really say much more (laughing) about the new Aprilia projects. But maybe one important thing is that we are starting to think now as a global company — really looking also at foreign markets. Whereas in the last few years, we were mainly focused on Italy and Europe. I think, well I know, America is becoming a very important market for us, and we will observe very close what’s going on in America.
MD: Klaus, it was very interesting talking to you. It is a very exciting company you are working for. We hope to see many more great things from you and from Aprilia. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.
KN: My pleasure. Thank you.
