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Beautiful from every angle
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Aprilia took Indian petrolheads by surprise when they launched a 150cc sports scooter "SR150". Why? Because they can!. Honda started the cult of gearless scooter and became an instant success. The market for an easy and comfortable riding scooter was very big. Activa rules the Indian roads and still outsells every other scooter by a huge margin. Every other manufacturers like Suzuki, TVS, Mahindra and Hero tried their luck in this segment but didn't taste the success like the Activa, but Aprilia took a different approach. What Aprilia did was instead of targeting the Activa buyers, they targeted the power hungry youths and petrolheads looking for a sporty commute and great styling. All this factors contributed and created a different segment of sport scooters. To make it affordable for the Indian buyers, Aprilia did many cost cuttings which reflects in overall quality of the scooter.
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| Nothing comes close to the sporty styling of Aprilia SR150 |
Now after riding the bike for nearly 6000 km here's what I think about the Aprilia SR 150
Design:-
Boy oh boy, this thing looks badass from every angle. It is so sharp that you might end up cutting yourself. The scooter is very aggressively designed, even the sharp beak at the front looks aerodynamic. The 14 inch alloy rims are the biggest you get in the scooter segment, and they look absolutely beautiful. The Aprilia SR branding on the rear and front body panels looks sporty and neatly done. We have Aprilia branding on the side skirts of the floorboard. The instrument cluster is very basic with speedometer, odometer and fuel gauge. The rear view mirrors are small and doesn't provide with enough rear view. The dual tone seat looks premium and the red-black color combination compliments the color of the bike. The under seat storage is small and doesn't fits a full face helmet, only small half face helmets are comfortable in there. The dual headlight setup looks good, but lacks the illumination. The engine is partly exposed and makes the design look minimalist. We have Aprilia branding on the CVT gearbox. The tail section is compact and houses the tail light and turn indicators on the rear mudguard along with No. plate. The turn indicators are more bike like then the conventional scooter's turn indicators. Front handle bars have integrated turn indicators. The front wheel has a 220mm disc which complements the bikes sporty nature. Overall the bike looks purpose made.
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| Larger wheels means, more places to explore |
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Engine:-
Aprilia uses the same engine which is found in Vespa 150cc scooters. This brought down the cost of developing a new engine from ground up. But the engine characteristic is very different from the Vespa's. The 154.8 cc single cylinder makes 10.06Hp@6750rpm and 10.09Nm@5000rpm both at the crank. The engine is in different state of tune, the engine is more responsive and has a rev happy nature. The engine has pleasant idling vibes but once on the move the vibes smoothen out and is very refined afterwards. The power delivery is very smooth and the SR150 climbs the speedo very quickly. This is achieved by tweaking the CVT gearbox. The engine manages to deliver a fuel economy of around 30-35 km/lit(City and highway combined), which is acceptable. The fuel tank capacity is 6.6 liters and full tank range is around to 180 km - 200 km.
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Nothing in market handles like this beauty, it corners like a sports bike.
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Handling:-
The bike has telescopic 30mm forks at the front and a monoshock suspension at the rear, both are stiffly sprung. The bikes total kerb weight is 122 kg, combine that with 14 inch wheels at both ends and you'll end up with a very sharp handling scooter. This particular scooter can put most of the 150cc motorbikes to shame in terms of handling. This bike loves to corner and the sticky Vee rubbers at both ends provide with lots of grip and feedback. The bike will do 100km/hr all day long and can hit the top speed of 120km/hr (all are speedometer indicated). The bike loves highway rides and can comfortably cruise at 70 km/hr-80 km/hr. The ride quality is very harsh due to the stiff suspension setup, you feel every bump and potholes. The bike has a small seat and the rear pillion footrests are front set. Riding with pillion is no problem, but more than 50km will be uncomfortable.
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The dual headlight setup looks good, but the performance is inadequate for highway riding
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Final Verdict :-
The stickers on the side skirts and the front are peeling. The sari guard came off along with one screw and another on broken in the housing. Initially the bike returned a very low mileage of 18-22 km/liter, after continuous complaints to the service centre nothing changed. Finally we had to complain to the Aprilia's customer care, only then the carburetor was replaced under warranty and now the problem is solved. The floor board is small and tall riders might find it cumbersome. The sidewall of rear tyre developed multiple bulge only after 5000km, it was replaced under warranty. The Aprilia SR150 is a very capable sport scooter on it's own, but the company should focus on providing strong service support network.
Should you buy one? Yes! because nothing in the market is as exciting as the SR150. Well we have TVS Ntorq, but that's a 125cc engine so it's different class and would be compared with Aprilia's brand new SR125. Till then Ciao!
Note:- All the images used in this blog are clicked by The AutoTech Wrencher and is subjected to copyright.
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