The Slowest Bike I've Had This Much Fun On

Seven point two one seconds. That's how long the RS 457 takes to get from 40 to 80 miles an hour, and by the standards of this leaderboard, that's slow. Some of you will read that number, scroll past, and go looking for something with a bigger engine.

Do that and you miss the point entirely.

Aprilia didn't build this bike to win a drag race. They built it to answer a question most people assumed couldn't be answered: can you put a real Italian sportbike under seven grand and have it still feel Italian? I've ridden this thing on the COTA racetrack, and now around Georgia in a hundred degree heat. I gotta be honest, I think they pulled it off.

The RS 457 is not fast. It's also one of the most genuinely enjoyable motorcycles I've thrown a leg over all year.

Performance Highlights

The engine is a 457cc parallel twin with a 270 degree crank, and like every 270 twin, it sounds better than it has any right to. It makes about 47 horsepower. On paper that's fine. In practice, it's a motor with a very specific opinion about where you should be in the rev range.

Down low, there's nothing. Roll on in eco or rain and the power builds so politely you'll wonder if you left it in a mode designed for wet grocery runs. Flip it to sport, drop traction control to one, spin it past six thousand rpm, and there it is. A physical shove in the back. The power lives in the top third of the tach and it dies off fast once you're through it, so the whole game becomes staying in the right gear. Miss the gear and the bike just shrugs at you.

Which is how the 40 to 80 run took 7.21 seconds, second gear into the top of fourth. It's a 457. What do you expect.

What you don't expect is how it corners. It weighs 385 pounds wet and you feel every pound that isn't there. I think about a lane change and the bike is already in the next lane. It takes no energy at all, and that's with clip-on bars. Then you discover both ends of the suspension are adjustable, on a motorcycle that costs less than a used middleweight, and it stays planted in a way small bikes usually don't.

The Bybre brakes I complained about at COTA. Turned out I just needed to adjust the lever out. Set up properly, they'll haul this bike down without drama. Nothing more than that, but nothing less either.

Rider Experience & Tech

You sit on the RS 457, not in it. Slight forward lean, legs bent, arms draped down. Sporty, but nowhere near the folded-in-half posture of a supersport. I'm 5'10" with a 32 inch inseam, and I could flat foot it at a light and still tuck behind the screen at ninety.

The dash is a color TFT and it's better than a bike at this price has any business having. Three ride modes, switchable traction control you can change on the move, adjustable levers with a bend in them that your fingers just find. This is exactly where companies start cutting to hit a number. Aprilia didn't.

Then you go to change a setting and find out you have to press a button, hold it, and wait for something to happen. Kawasaki does this. Aprilia does this. I hate it. Own the bike a month and you'll never think about it again. Ride a different bike every week and it's a small tax you pay every single time.

The transmission is the other one. No missed shifts, no false neutrals, nothing actually wrong with it. It just feels light under your boot, like it's made of thinner metal than the rest of the motorcycle. And up close, the fit and finish sits a half step below what the badge on the tank promises.

It'll do the city, hold 80 in sixth on the highway, and carve the north Georgia twisties. There's no cruise control and the tank is small, so don't plan a tour around it.

The Chase Score & Final Thoughts

With a Chase Score of 66 out of 100, the RS 457 lands in the Good tier, three points up on the Kawasaki Ninja 500 it's supposed to be fighting. Except I don't think that's the fight. Its real rival is the KTM RC 390, because those two are the only bikes down here that are seriously, unapologetically sport bikes.

Buy it if you've been riding a while, you want something light and sharp, and you care more about how a motorcycle feels than what it does to a stopwatch. This thing makes a red light to red light commute fun, and that says more about a bike than any roll-on time.

Skip it if you need to pass traffic at highway speed without planning ahead, or if the acceleration column is the only column you read.