Giovanni Castiglioni, president and CEO of the legendary Italian manufacturer MV Agusta and son to the late and great Claudio, has confirmed that their next three-cylinder machine will be named ‘Rivale’ and it won’t be a Supermoto, it will rather be a cross between a Supermoto and an Enduro that will present itself as an entirely ‘new concept’, meaning a totally new kind of motorcycle.
The name ‘Rivale’ got registered about month ago, but at the moment it is still unclear whether the new model will be equipped with the same 3-cylinder 675 cc engine powering the F3 and the Brutale 675 or it will get a 800 cc triple.
Whatever the case, it is already certain that the MV Agusta Rivale will make its debut next November at the EICMA in Milan, although it is likely it will be introduced as a mere ‘concept-bike’ that will introduce the eventual production version of the model.
In spite of the current limp economy in Europe, there still are some manufacturers that are ready to invest in order to gain or enlarge their market shares, and in light of what they have done in the last two years Ducati and MV Agusta are surely at the top of that list.
Apparently, the man behind the design of the most recent MV Agusta models, Mr.
Adrian Morton, is already putting the finishing touches to the aesthetics of the Rivale, but we would expect it to be somewhat inspired by the MV Agusta Tricruiser concept that a bunch of students of the European Institute of Design (IED) of Turin presented in November 2011 (pictured).
Rumor has it that MV Agusta is planning to use their 675 cc 3-cylinder unit for a number of different projects, but we will have to wait and see whether that is true or not.
For now we can just wait for the 2012 EICMA to see how the Rivale will look like.