Ciao,Bella!
From the shores of the staggeringly beautiful Lake Varese in Northern Italy, under Sardarov’s watch MV Agusta has renewed vigour and engineering prowess that will no doubt be welcome news for dealers. A slew of new MV Agusta models has come and will continue to do so in the near future, but none has caused quite the stir of the Superveloce 800. Resplendent in MV Agusta silver and red with a beautiful gold tubular steel chassis and gold wheels (there’s also a black version with gold wheels), the Superveloce is a firm doff of the cap to Giacomo Agostini and the machines on which he dominated 1960s grand prix racing. However, the Superveloce retains all the modern technology and traits that have been a cornerstone in the brand’s resurgence. Under the very fancy dress sits an F3 800 supersport machine, its three-cylinder, 798 cc motor pumping out a claimed 148 hp at 13,000 rpm and 65 lb-ft of torque at 10,600 rpm. You also get four riding modes, ABS, cruise control, and the new five-inch TFT dash that features the MVride app for navigation mirroring. Like the F3, the Superveloce comes with a beautiful triplet of exhaust mufflers that exit just above the rear wheel on the right. Mercifully, these pipes are just on the right side of loud. The Superveloce sounds
fantastic, giving that lovely wail we’ve come to expect from three-cylinder MVs but never tire of hearing. The sound is accompanied by torque for days, so you won’t have to go jumping up and down on the ultra-smooth quickshifter—just keep the revs above 3,000, and crack the throttle. MV has the ride-by-wire system dialed on the Superveloce. There’s four riding modes to choose from in Sport, Race, Rain, and the Custom map you can build with your PC.
MV was one of the first to fit the MotoGP-style counter-rotating crankshaft (a few years before Ducati did with the Panigale V4 range), and the go from the inline-three is seamlessly transitioned to the rear wheel without undue wheelies. The traction control system is by all accounts pretty rudimentary, but it does the job well enough. The only bummer is you can’t switch the system off. The seat, which looks like it’s styled from Casey Stoner’s Ducati Desmosedici GP9, is wafer thin and the Marzocchi fork and Sachs shock combination is, to put it politely, on the stiff side. The fork action is progressive enough but it still lacks the optimum high speed compression damping a bike this expensive and exclusive deserves. That said, when the speed is high and the road twisty, the Superveloce is a gem. When hauling the Superveloce up from those speeds, you’re graced with twin 320 mm discs gripped by four-piston Brembo Monobloc calipers, which in turn are squeezed by a conventional Nissin master-cylinder, with the Bosch 9 Plus ABS system that comes with its own Race mode. A black mark must be given to the rear brake. The cause of this is that the master-cylinder is mounted at the bottom of the engine, right above where the hottest part of the bike—the catalytic convertor—is situated. The result means the fluid boils super quickly and when you go for the rear brake, all you get is fade and a meek attempt at slowing the rear wheel from the two-piston Brembo caliper.
Let’s be honest. You’re paying a premium for the styling, and that’s totally fine. The performance of the Superveloce is more than enough for most riders, especially in this age of ever-decreasing speed limits and increased radar presence.
In my eyes, it’s nothing short of gorgeous. There’s been a lot of effort and thought put into the design.
It’s a fashion accessory, and the older (and slower) I get, the more this sort of thing appeals to me. We all know sportbikes have been in decline for years, so MV should be congratulated for creating a bike that’s capable of giving you some weekend jollies while looking damn fine in the process.