Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

Every so often, we are given stories that we're simply not able to squeeze into the magazine.

The creator of the Aprilia Shiver is one of the most modest and least known of the Italian progettist who collectively shape the way that motorcycles the world over continue to evolve, both from a conceptual and a styling point of view – what they are, as well as how they look.

Aprilia Shiver 750 test

Alberto Cappella – Profession: Progettista

Alberto Cappella, 49, is a man whose shy, retiring disposition makes him prefer to let his creations speak for themselves - bikes like the Moto Guzzi MGS-01 designer BattleTwin, or his Laverda prototypes. During a ten-year career at Aprilia first time around from 1988-98, Cappella was responsible for designing the Amico scooter which set the Italian marque into the first division of two-wheeled manufacturers in terms of volume, as well as the iconic RS250 two-stroke repliracer, plus its spinoff RS125 and RS50 ring-ding road rockets. He also collaborated with style guru Philippe Starck in creating the Moto 6.5 street single which was so scorned at the time, but is now a major collectors item that’s recognized as way ahead of its time. The effectiveness of his work in translating the ideas of the French designer into two-wheeled practicality earned Cappella a return gig working with him on his prototype V-twin roadster design, which sadly never reached production, and now sits in the corridor outside the Noale factory office of Alberto’s new boss, Ducati Monster creator Miguel Galluzzi. The Argentinian ex-CRC designer moved across to Aprilia last year to head up the company’s Centro Stile, by which time Cappella’s design for the Shiver had been signed off by management and was headed for production.

Cappella left Aprilia for a couple of years in 1998, moving as Chief Designer to nearby Laverda – then owned by entrepreneur Francesco Tognon, before it was acquired from him in all but defunct form by Ivano Beggio in 2000, joining the Aprilia family of trophy marques. While there, Cappella designed the abortive 800TTS parallel-twin adventure tourer which would have anticipated the Multistrada had it reached production and, more significantly, the 650 Lynx, a Suzuki-engined V-twin Naked bike with modular frame which was in every way the progenitor of the Shiver, but was also stillborn. Welcomed back into the Aprilia family after the Laverda takeover, Cappella went to Moto Guzzi for two years, where he created the MGS-01 (“but only the styling, not the design – that was Giuseppe Ghezzi’s work, a great engineer”), before rejoining Aprilia in 2002 to work on various projects, before being handed the Shiver design brief when work on it officially got under way in March 2005.

OK, Alberto - is the 750 Shiver a stand-alone project, or is it being developed as part of a range of 90-degree V-twins Aprilias? “The first priority is to develop the family of 750 models,” declared Cappella, as we chatted over an ice-cream and coffee in the mirror-glassed Adria circuit café. “But we’re taking care to structure each one in such a way that it can be upgraded technically and cost-effectively to a larger capacity version. And there will be a definite family resemblance between each model – it’s important that you should know that bike’s an Aprilia when you look at it. We’re working on two different versions of the 750 Shiver at the moment, besides the one you’ve just been riding, but by altering engine capacity, as well as the upper frame section and even the swingarm design, we can arrive at as many as ten or eleven different V-twin models – of course, not all at once, but over a period of three years or so. It’s going to be a big family!”

Although the Shiver project was only officially kickstarted in March 2005 with the injection of Piaggio funds into developing new models, in fact it had already been worked on for eight months prior to that, says Cappella – just that Aprilia’s fragile existence until the Piaggio takeover in December 2004 meant that no detailed design work could be done. But once under way, things moved ahead very quickly, with Cappella quickly translating his original outline drawing into a full-size design, passing in July 2005 to clay model stage – an unbelievably fast pace even by Italian design standards. This was progressively refined until October that year, when its format was established and the full-size model painted and readied in January 2006 for management approval – which it immediately received. But by then a rough version of the final design was already being ridden, equipped with the prototype 750cc V-twin engine initially designed at the Piaggio factory in Pontedera, then further developed at the Aprilia R&D Centre at Noale, where it has so far undergone 600 hours of dyno time, and covered 50,000 km. in road testing.

“The idea was always to create a middleweight Naked bike with an individual personality that could compete in the most popular model sector, where it would stand out by its appearance and by its technical solutions,” states Cappella. “But it was considered important not to produce something with too extreme a design – it had to be striking and pleasing, but not way out, as you say in England. I wanted to harmonise the various technical components, but to have individual details which said ‘Aprilia’. I chose from the beginning to use the composite frame design because of my previous experience with it (on the Laverda Lynx – AC), which had convinced me it was ideally suited to developing a family of models, since you can modify it quite quickly and cost-effectively to create a series of different designs using the same basis. Even a Custom bike could be made out of the Shiver, using the same essential chassis design, just with a much wider head angle – but don’t assume from that we’re going to make one!. Some of my engineering colleagues were rather sceptical at first about the composite chassis, but I held my ground and I’m glad to say they came round to the idea, and indeed succeeded in executing it in a very satisfying way. I believe that together we have created something exceptional, which exactly fulfils my own personal goals, as well as the design brief I received from the management. Now I hope our customers agree, too!”

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