For a while now, there’s  been a lot of buzz about a new Aprilia adventure bike, built around the company’s new 660 parallel twin platform. Now, the first photo of that bike has shown up online … supposedly.

You can see the photo by clicking this link to the Motoblog story (the spy photography business can be a minefield, which is why we aren’t running the photos here). Motoblog doesn’t say much about the bike or the photo, just some lines about seeing the photo online. As the article says, this certainly appears to be Aprilia’s 660 parallel twin, and that’s definitely an adventure machine, so it looks like this rumour is confirmed.

The industry is still waiting for Aprilia’s RS660 sport bike to hit the market, but it probably won’t take much longer; COVID-19 hit the Italian industry hard, and it’s not like Aprilia has deep pockets to push projects like this forward, either. Basically, the 660 platform is Aprilia realizing everyone else had the right idea, with parallel twin engines to save money. Instead of going all-out cheap, though, Aprilia supposedly recycled tech from its V4 superbike line into the 660 platform, and also adapted its advanced electronics package to the middleweight machine. In theory, this should be a cost-effective bike that’s still plenty of fun to ride.

The RS660 debuted on the show circuit first, and then we started getting hints of the Tuono 660 naked bike. Then, at the 2019 EICMA show, Aprilia cleverly hid an adventure bike concept behind some palm trees in its booth, leading to suspicions we’d see the Tuareg name revived. If this photo is accurate, it’s highly likely we’ll see that bike on this year’s show circuit, at least in concept form.

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