Chinese-made Aprilias to get Gilera branding
Despite an illustrious history, Gilera has been shuffled to the sidelines in Piaggio's vast group of brands - the name appearing only on occasional scooters in recent years. Now Gilera is set to make a return to large displacement bikes as the Chinese Piaggio-Zongshen venture is developing a reborn version of the Aprilia Shiver 900 that will go under the Gilera name.
The first clue came last year when Zongshen showed its RA9 concept bike, a futuristic-looking machine built around a repurposed Aprilia Shiver V-twin engine and chassis. Alongside that concept, the company mysteriously showed a standalone version of the same engine wearing Gilera badges.
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Another clue appeared at the start of 2022, when Piaggio bosses visiting China from Italy confirmed that a 900 cc twin-cylinder bike would be manufactured later in 2022 by the Piaggio-Zongshen joint venture that already makes a range of smaller scooters and motorcycles wearing Aprilia badges. Shortly after that, patents emerged showing the Gilera-branded V-twin engine, and now spy photographs of disguised prototype Gilera 900 cc V-twins have appeared on Chinese social media.
The new Gilera 900 is identical to the final iteration of the Aprilia Shiver 900, which was dropped in Europe in 2021. The headlight is slightly updated, with more modern-looking LED running light strips on either side, but other than that, the changes from Aprilia Shiver 900 to Gilera 900 are non-existent.
While the Shiver is far from a cutting-edge design, having first appeared in 2008, the 900 cc version was only launched in 2017, so it remains a relatively modern machine. By minimising design changes but transplanting production to China, Piaggio will massively reduce manufacturing costs and eliminate the costly import duties imposed on bikes imported to China, where demand for larger-capacity machines is on the rise.
Piaggio-Zongshen already manufactures several China-only models under the Aprilia name, so a Chinese-made Shiver 900 wouldn't raise many eyebrows. However, if Piaggio has ideas to sell the bike internationally, using the Gilera brand may make more sense, distancing the Chinese-made machine from Italian Aprilias.
With the Shiver engine and chassis back in production, spin-off models like the supermoto-style Aprilia Dorsoduro and touring-oriented Caponord - both Shiver derivatives - could also be revived to give the Chinese-made Gilera brand an instant broad model range. In its old Aprilia guise, the Shiver's V-twin engine was also sold in 750 cc and 1,200 cc versions as well as the 900 cc form, so there's scope for a very broad, modular range with the bare minimum of R&D expense.
