Earlier this year, Aprilia unveiled the RS 457 and the company teased the bike just in time for the India Bike Week festival scheduled this week. The bike made its India debut back in September ahead of the Indian Grand Prix ridden by factory rider Maverick Vinales. With almost everything from design to specifications already known, a large chunk of the country’s bike buffs have their eyes on the price announcement.
The RS 457 is a sports bike based on the Italian manufacturer’s bigger bikes like the RS 660 and RSV4. These are big shoes to fill for the tiny 457, but it does so with style. The little Aprilia gets a typical sports bike design with its pointy fairing, big bulbous tank and split seat setup. At the front, there is a split headlamp with an LED DRL taking centre stage set into the sharp fairing. The cuts and creases don’t quite flow seamlessly into the tank. The design is sort of segmented and only when you look at the profile of the bike from a distance will you see that all the bends and folds line up neatly into a very fluid form.
Like a proper sports bike, the RS 457’s riding stance is fairly committed. However, Aprilia says that the clip-on ‘half’ handlebars provide a proper balance between full track mode and riding comfort. Now, in some of the pictures on the website, the passenger seat is virtually non-existent. This could just be an optional cowl and the rear seat will most likely come standard.
Powering the RS is a 457cc liquid-cooled parallel-twin engine capable of generating 46.7 hp of maximum power at 9,000 rpm and 43.5 Nm of peak torque at 6,700 rpm. These are some impressive numbers, but considering the capacity is over 50cc higher than its closest 399cc competitor, the Kawasaki Ninja 400, this isn’t surprising. For context, the Ninja peaks at 45 hp and 37 Nm. So, more power, but lower torque.
Going back to the Aprilia, the RS 457 is built around a twin-spar aluminium frame suspended on a 41 mm upside down fork up front and a monoshock at the rear. Unsprung weight comprises two 17-inch alloys at each end stopped by a 320 mm disc at the front and a 220 mm disc at the rear. Dual-channel ABS is par for the course, as is three-level traction control. Transmission duties are handled by a 6-speed gearbox.
On the features front, the RS gets a 5-inch TFT dash complete with Bluetooth connectivity. We already touched upon traction control and ABS, but it also gets ride-by-wire tech which allows for three riding modes. The RS’s seat height measures 800 mm, but the narrow perch should mean that it won’t be too difficult to put two feet on the floor. Finally, with a 13-litre fuel tank, the bike weighs 176 kg at the kerb with all essential fluids filled and all standard equipment bolted on. Overall, the Aprilia will be a light little sports bike.
The RS 457 has been designed and tuned in Italy, but the company is going to be manufacturing the bike in India. This means a significantly lower price point since Aprilia won’t have to go the completely built-up (CBU) or completely knocked-down (CKD) route, which entails additional taxes. However, with the specifications list and the features, and the significance of just being an Aprilia, could mean a higher price tag than the norm. While some of its competitors, the KTM RC390, the BMW G 310 RR or even the TVS Apache RR 310, are priced below the Rs 3.5-lakh mark, we can expect the RS 457 to retail somewhere closer to the Rs 4.50 lakh mark, bridging the gap between the aforementioned bikes and the Kawasaki Ninja 400 which is priced at Rs 5.24 lakh.
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