Aprilia Futura - How reliable is it?
The Aprilia Futura is, after all, Italian, so you you can't expect it to be reliable, right?
Wrong!
One
problem with building a site like this is that it tends to list faults
more than good points. That's for two reasons:
- The fact that many owners have clocked up very high mileages on their bikes and many faults have only come to light with heavy use. At the time of writing I know of at least one bike with 100,000 miles up, and plenty more to cover more than 50,000 miles, many with few, if any, problems.
- The wealth of information shared by owners from all over the world on the apriliaforum. The enthusiasm of owners the world over for the bike is staggering, as is their willingness to help each other out.
The
Futura was designed to do big miles and many owners have taken full advantage.
If the bike was unreliable you wouldn't even think about riding from The Netherlands to Volgagrad, as RPB did or on a marathon trip from Bath around the Balkans, taking in Albania, as Spitfire Triple did.
And trips like theirs are not unusual. See the Touring index.
It's
fair to say the Futura is no more or less dependable than your average
Japanese bike. It's certainly no fragile Italian thoroughbred - and Aprilia
aren't known as the Italian Honda for nothing.
Like any bike there can be bad 'uns but the majority are solid, reliable machines - so long as you don't neglect them.
But you should look after any bike or expect it to let you down. Unfortunately, at least in the UK, a fair few neglected bikes have made it onto the second hand market in the last few years.
However, most of the faults listed on this website have only occurred to a handful of bikes - often after extremely high mileages, and most remain relatively trouble-free.
It's arguable that the Futura, once a few common issues have been taken care of, can be as reliable as any Japanese and European sports tourer.
It's certainly more comfortable.
So don't let any faults you read about on these pages put you off buying one, because you'd be missing out.
Page last updated: June 6, 2010
