I have a thing for adventure motorcycles. They are the most practical motorcycles to have in a market like India, where majority of the roads are in a bad state and it only gets worse during monsoon. Plus, their styling is also aspirational and that’s also why a lot of motorcycle companies in India are entering that space. At the entry-level, there’s the Hero MotoCorp, Royal Enfield and Suzuki. But as you move up the price, you will find brands like Triumph, BMW and Ducati making a big difference. There’s also a new entrant in this space – Aprilia. With the recently launched Tuareg 660, Aprilia has made its presence felt, sadly, with a lot of negativity.
The Tuareg 660 has been priced at Rs 18.85 lakh (ex-showroom) and with all the taxes and registration costs, the on-road price comes to a whopping Rs 23.29 lakh. With this pricing, the Tuareg 660 isn’t just the most expensive in its segment, but it is also more expensive than the bikes in the segment above. In fact, it comes very close to ADVs that are sitting at the top end of the segment. For example, the Harley-Davidson Pan America - the mammoth 150bhp adventure bike - sells for Rs 24.8 lakh (on-road). The Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro retails at Rs 23.84 lakh (on-road). One of the highest-selling big adventure bikes – the Triumph Tiger Rally Pro sells at Rs 19.91 lakh (on-road). The closest rival of the Aprilia Tuareg 660 when it comes to displacement is the Honda XL750 Transalp which costs Rs 12.77 lakh (on-road) – almost half the price of the Tuareg 660. So with such massive pricing differences, it is clear that almost every other big adventure bike offers way more value than this Italian bike. But there are a few things that you need to know.
Firstly, brands like Ducati and Triumph import majority of their line-up from Thailand – a country with which India has a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). This means, these companies don’t have to pay any import duties on their motorcycles and as a result of that, they can price their motorcycles quite well, and the company and their dealers make some really good profit margins. Piaggio – the company that owns brands like Aprilia, don’t have this option. The Tuareg 660 and the rest of their big bikes come to India from Italy as completely built-up units (CBU) and this route attracts a custom duty of 50 per cent. Plus, manufacturing bikes in Italy is an expensive affair and that is why brands like Ducati decided to shift a huge chunk of their manufacturing base to Thailand to cater to South East Asian markets. Due to high manufacturing costs, the price of the Tuareg 660 is already quite high when it leaves its factory in Italy. By the time it reaches India, there’s custom duty, profits of Piaggio India and also their dealers to be considered. As a result, the Tuareg 660 is priced so high and the folks at Piaggio India know that they can’t really compete with the Tigers and the Africa Twins for that matter. Due to that, it is playing the brand recall and product positioning game.
Aprilia is positioned as a high-performance and premium two-wheeler brand in India. With such high pricing of the Tuareg 660, the company wants to attract consumers who are looking for exclusivity and value in what Aprilia brands offer. Plus, the brand has limited service reach too. As of now, there are only 10 showrooms that are authorised to sell their big bikes and that means limited service centres. If they had priced the Tuareg 660 competitively, the bike would have sold in large numbers but the service support wouldn’t have been ready to cater to such large numbers. Also, remember that Piaggio’s primary business in India is scooters and the majority of the revenues come from that segment. So it makes sense for them to experiment with premium bikes with their ‘high pricing low volume’ sales strategy.
If I were in the market for a big adventure motorcycle, I would have bought something like the Suzuki V-Storm 800 DE, which is perfect for a guy like me who loves to spend time off-road. But if I wanted something on the premium side and had a few more lakh to spend, the Ducati Desert X would have been the choice. Here, I would get the performance as well as the premium brand experience. While I really appreciate Piaggio bringing their big bikes to India, I don’t think an ADV lover like me would ever consider the Tuareg 660 for the price it sells at and I haven’t even ridden it yet.
