Aprilia SL 750 Shiver is one cool ride

Is it cold in here, or is it me? Maybe I’m just feeling the cool from Aprilia’s new Shiver, in all its freak-out orange glory.

The 750 cc V-twin Shiver is a sport bike, but it’s an entirely new breed for the Italian manufacturer: a competitively priced, do-it-all middleweight standard that can be used to slice and dice canyons or ride slab to work.

Until this year’s Shiver, Aprilia didn’t have any bikes to fill the gap between its 143-horsepower RSV liter bike, its 139-hp naked brother -- the Tuono -- and its scooters, which could explain why the Venice-based company doesn’t have nearly the same name recognition in the U.S. as its Bologna neighbor, Ducati. But, as the Shiver’s tank emblem so proudly declares with ESL flair, Aprilia is “27 times world champions.” Most of those championships have just been in the MotoGP’s smaller 125 and 250 cc categories.

It’s this racing legacy that Aprilia is leveraging with the Shiver, employing various performance technologies that are more typical on a track-oriented, middleweight sport bike than on an upright, street-going standard. The brake cables, for example, are braided steel. And the front 320 mm discs are squeezed with racetrack-ready, radial four-piston calipers.

Even more notable are the ride-by-wire throttle, which uses electronics (instead of a cable) to more accurately respond to twists of the grip, and a new triple-mapping feature that allows riders to select between three different power modes.

This Tri-Map system, managed by the bike’s electronic control unit, is new for Aprilia, and it’s only available on the Shiver. When the bike is idling, the ignition switch doubles as a toggle that allows riders to choose between rain mode (a safety feature that muzzles the bike’s power when the riding gets slick), sport (which makes the throttle sensitive to the point of being twitchy) and touring (which makes it smooth). I found the three modes to be so distinct that each setting was like riding a different motorcycle.

I also found the touring mode to be sort of a misnomer since this bike is a standard and doesn’t have a windshield. “Commuting” would probably be a more accurate name for this easy-to-use mode, which is the setting I enjoyed most. “Sport” was more sensitive than I wanted, even in the cut-it-loose canyons, where the Shiver otherwise shimmers as an extremely well-balanced, smooth-shifting and flickable machine.

Aprilia is Italian, which means its focus isn’t only performance but also style. The Shiver is no exception, with its steel trellis frame and bodywork that is more chiseled than a Mr. Olympia contender. Then there’s my favorite feature on this bike -- the exhaust. It wasn’t the shape of these tucked-under-the-tail, catalyzed, 2-into-1-into-2 stainless steel cans that grabbed me so much as their guttural thrum, which was developed with fellow Italians Alfa Romeo. The legendary sports-car manufacturer has a much larger and more elaborate sound chamber, and it’s just 170 miles from Aprilia headquarters -- easily reached with a crack of the throttle.

susan.carpenter@latimes.com