Bikes that Time Forgot: The Aprilia Moto 6.5

Welcome to the first in a new series where we dig out the bikes the world walked straight past — the odd, the overlooked and the plain unlucky. And we’re starting with a machine styled by a man better known for boutique hotels than bikes.

A Starck choice

Back in the early nineties, Aprilia was a company on the up, and keen to reach beyond its race-replica two-stroke crowd to something altogether harder to crack: people who didn’t ride bikes at all. The answer, they decided, was a friendly, unintimidating single for city use — and to make sure everybody was talking about it, they handed the job of styling it to French design superstar Philippe Starck.

The result appeared at the Bologna show in autumn 1994 and hit showrooms the following year. Underneath, it was sensible stuff: the 652cc liquid-cooled five-valve single from the Aprilia Pegaso 650, softened to around 43bhp, balancer shaft keeping the vibes in check, steel frame, Marzocchi suspension at both ends and a very manageable 181kg wet weight.

On top, though, nothing else on the road came close. Starck’s bodywork was all circles and curves — round headlight, one sweeping line from tank to tail, wire wheels, barely a sharp edge or a superfluous fitting anywhere, and even the name pared back to a number. Less a motorcycle, than something you’d find on a plinth in a gallery. Hold that thought.

Marmite, motorised

The reaction was split clean down the middle. Some loved its futuristic simplicity; others couldn’t see past the styling, and Aprilia’s usual race-bred sparkle was notable by its absence. The press conceded it did exactly what it was designed to do — light, low and easy around town — but found it resolutely average at everything else.

The buying public was less pragmatic and kept their hands firmly in their pockets; only around 6,200 were built before production was quietly stopped in 1996. Aprilia had another go from 1999, leaning rather harder on the Starck name this time, but the stay of execution only lasted until 2002.

Museum piece

Here’s the twist: the bike the showrooms couldn’t shift is now, quite literally, a museum piece: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has one in its permanent collection, parked alongside Starck’s other greatest hits. Not many mid-nineties bikes can claim that.

Aprilia 6.5 by Philippe Starck (1995) in the Munich Modern Art Gallery | photo credit: Wikisympathisant

And thirty years on, with stylish single cylinder motorcycles topping the sale charts, you could argue the 6.5 was simply too early. A bike stripped of aggression and pretence, built for people rather than lap times? Sounds rather sensible now.

Although the Moto 6.5 may have been radical, it lacked the racing DNA that shines through in Aprilia's current range of Italian-designed motorcycles, which includes sporty scooters for urban mobility.  Visit Fowlers' Bristol showrooms to see what Aprilia has to offer.