Why Aprilia RS 660's India price is a little too much to pay

The Aprilia RS 660 has gone on sale in the Indian market recently. While sure Italians are priced a bit exotically over their Japanese counterparts and it is understood, but what has happened with the RS 660 is something beyond comprehension.

For starters, Aprilia's new middleweight supersport demands a price tag of ₹13.39 lakh (ex-showroom). For a quick comparison, the 2020 Suzuki Hayabusa when launched was priced at ₹13.75 lakh (ex-showroom). Of course, it would be unfair to compare motorcycles of completely different leagues, but we'll get to that later.

The RS 660 has been made available in India as a CBU (Completely Built Unit) which makes it slightly costlier to import seeing the hefty taxation that the CBU models attract in India, hence many premium bike makers (especially Suzuki and Kawasaki) have ramped up the import of models as CKD to keep the pricing competitive. Needless to say, CBUs are inherently on the costlier side of the chart. But at ₹13.39 lakh (ex-showroom) the middleweight motorcycle becomes even costlier than the Triumph Street Triple RS that demands ₹11.4 lakh (ex-showroom) and offers 123 PS.

At about 100 PS, the RS 660 rivals the likes of the Yamaha RZF-R7 (not available in India), and the upcoming Kawasaki Ninja 700R (still under development), both these models use a twin-cylidner configuration like the RS 660.

The RS 660 sure gets its share of the electronic features in the form of the latest generation APRC (Aprilia Performance Ride Control) package that includes traction control, wheelie control, cruise control, engine brake, engine map and more, but considering by spending just about ₹2 lakh more on something like a Ninja ZX-10R you can get 100 PS more, along with 2 extra cylinders to power the inline-4 symphony.