Aprilia stops making bikes

[priller]

https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/detail?sectionID=212131&documentID=198198

Looks like aprilia are in trouble.

[MarJay]

Thats a real shame, its probably got a lot to do with the scooter slump in italy, everyone used to have one until the helmet law was introduced recently.

Its also funny how Triumph seem to make a very small profit or very small loss each year... Could it be a tax reassignment method for Mr Bloor?
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[Sparks!]

To be honest I can't see a company of that size just going bankrupt. I'd imagine one or more companies will step in with a recovery package and Aprilia will live. Thing with bankrupcy etc is that it can just happen, literally overnight on some cases but I'd imagine some other companies will step in with some cash.
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[Soosta]

Bloody hell! Didn't realise their situation was that bad. What would the world do without the Italian class that is Aprilia!?

[Demonic69]

If we all chip in.....
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[priller]

If they do go bankrupt how's that going to effect resale values?

[McJamweasel]

I would say that if anything it would lower it slightly in the sort term, due to the lack of spares availability.

Not good news tho.
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[MarJay]

[priller]

[G]

The hippies had 2 raptors .... they are quite rare, but then that's partly the point of them.

As Aprilia have a pretty strong portfolio of bikes I can't see them going under totally, even if the current company does go bankrupt.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Ouch. With around 5 Aprilias that could hurt me. Hopefully they will survive.

The scooter market in Italy has crashed, and Aprilia also started out profitably supplying the Italian 125 market which also crashed just over a decade ago. A few years back I heard that Aprilia, Piaggio and a couple of others had around 800,000 unsold scooters sitting in warehouses betweem them.

As to Cagiva Raptors, they are quite common. There were loads of them in the car park at the Stafford classic bike show at the weekend. Mind you there was also a Norton F1 and a couple of Morini Darts.

All the best

Keith
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[dainesefreak]

Isn't it quite usual for an Italian Bike manufacturer to go bust?

I thought most of them have a good few times, they tend to get bailed out by the government or eventually picked up by someone else.

I wouldn't imagine Aprilia being out of the game for long even if the worst came to the worst.

Sad news none the less.

[Keen]

There's no way they're going bankrupt. Just isn't gonna happen. The interesting thing will be seeing who buys into them.
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[Key Walshe]

Talk on the Aprilia Forum is that it's just the scooter section that's having the issues and it will not affect the motorcycle bit. And that in Italy when a company goes bust the Government pays 80% of the workforce's wages so Aprilia can keep their staff on with almost full pay, continue to sell stock which they have shed's full of and wait for a company to buy into them.

Rumours have it Ducati are interested in buying Moto Guzzi and that Rotax Bombardier (they make most of the engines for Aprilia, RSV and the Rs125 ranges, aswell the Pegaso 650's) are going to buy a large part of Aprilia and could end up buying the controlling shares.

So they're not exactly going to go bust and stop producing bikes overnight like some other Italian firms, ie, Bimota, and are simply waiting for the right financial package to come along. The Cagiva group has gone bankrupt countless times now in their 25yrs yet they're still going well. All that is just speculation & rumours though so we'll just have to wait for an announcement from Aprilia.
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Previous Bikes: Aprilia Rs125 Harada Identikit (2001) Aprilia Rs50 Harada (2000) Aprilia Rs50 Rossi (1999)

[craigT19]

Things seem to be ok here?

[Robby]

An italian bike firm goes under every other week, then another set of banks bail them out, they spend all that money, the cycle continues.
They only need to find 5m short term to stay afloat. Its not a big problem for a company the size of aprilia.

Of course, they could get a lot more financial security if they just made a cheaper mass produced smaller bike. Litre class £10k+ bikes is a limited market, and its all they make. That and scooters. The nearest any of them have to a plain affordable bike is the guzzi breva, and its not a big seller.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Italian companies do go bust, so do companies all round the world (Lotus? Arai? Harley? Rolls Royce?). Under Italian bankruptcy laws companies can apply for controlled administration. Basically they get to trade for a year under close supervision, aiming towards clearing their debts. During that year their debts are guaranteed by the government (NOT bailed out) and they are protected from those they owe money to. Bimota went through this in the mid 1980's, came back and survived another 15 years before being killed off by a new lot of management. Strangely the some of the same people who managed to kill Laverda.

Not sure that Cagiva have ever gone bust. Their finances have got severely screwed up, but I don't think they have ever gone bankrupt (although the Czech government might like to get their hands on the Castiglionis for their involvement with CZ).

The last thing Aprilia need is to produce cheap bikes. There is stuff all money in that market. There main markets are Europe and the USA, neither of which have any real market for basic bikes (with the exception of scooters, and it is the massive drop in scooter sales that have screwed up Aprilias finances). Simply put the cost of building a top end bike is not really that much higher than building a basic bike, once all the R&D, distribution, etc is taken into account, yet the profit per unit on the basic bike is tiny. Anyway, as you say the only bike they have in this market is the Breva which is not a big seller. They do have bikes in most of the most profitable markets, although possibly they should shoot the stylist of the Futura and the Caponord.

Aprilia are apparently around £150m in debt. That is £500 per bike made in a year. Not a vast amount. More worrying is that they are probably getting hit for around £0.5m a month interest on that (and I thought my credit card bills were high).

It would not surprise me if Bombardier bought a large stake in Aprilia. Bombardier are a very large (Canadian) company, with Rotax being a small part of there group (they also own Shorts in Belfast for example). Rotax have pretty much given up building engines for anyone else now (hence why CCM now use Suzuki engines), and the only engines I can think of that Aprilia now use which are not from Rotax are the Minarelli engines used in some of the scooters and the 50's.

All the best

Keith
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[Doddmaster]

It's almost as bad as what's happening to my beloved Telford United

It will be a shame if Aprilia do fold, but I'm sure that if they scaled down their operation a bit they could start making some profit. They still sell a lot of scooters and the RSV is gettin ever more popular

[Kickstart]

Hi

First stage of the bail out:-

https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/detail?sectionID=212131&documentID=198896

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[cliff]

Knew they wouldn't go under!



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