MV Agusta F4 Strada

First of all, I’m not much of a four cylinder rider so this test is going to be describing how an MV might fit in as an everyday rider. Or to put it a different way, when one is a little too old to test a vicious race bike at its limits, one makes the best of the situation and describes how the bike might work as a Sunday afternoon fun bike.
If you are only going to ride on Sundays and the rest of the time plan to keep the bike in your office or living room, nothing fills the bill like an MV Agusta F4 Strada. Without much argument, it is the best looking sportbike ever made. And its profile is its worse side. The bike is even better looking from the front, back or the top. I’m sure there will be stone sculptures of this bike in about a hundred years lining the piazzas of Italy or the traffic circles of France. The bike is in the Guggenheim already for crying out loud. The man who designed this piece of art, Massimo Tamburini, should be captured by the Italian secret police and forced to redesign all of Italy’s motorcycles and scooters, regardlessof make. If theRussians got him, Urals or Dneprs sure would take a step up the ladder.

The basic layout of the bike is a familiar transverse four cylinder. The frame, however, is made of three separate pieces and feels as rigid as a block of aluminum. The oversized forks and single-sided swingarm are one up even on the Ducati 996. There are numerous details throughout the bike that make its $19K price tag seem reasonable. Owners will clearly get their money’s worth.

The first ride revealed the MV to be of the Ducati 996 level of comfort, only the dedicated need apply. I didn’t immediately get a crick in my neck, the Ducati still holds the record of four minutes into a ride and your thoughts centered not on the bike but the pain growing in your extremities and hindquarters. But the MV to me still seems extreme. I fitted slightly higher bars to make the road test bearable and tried to get my mind on the bike, not my hands and neck. The bars worked, the bike is OK on the street once your a little higher in front. A softer aftermarket seat would be nice, though.

The MV has little torque and needs to be revved to generate any horsepower at all. But that said, the fuel injection is perfect and the bike doesn’t seem to mind being ridden around at modest speeds. It never overheated and the drivetrain was admirable in all respects. The shifting was flawless, neutral easy to find at lights. The suspension is a little softer than that of the 996, small freeway bumps and ripples do not create any discomfort. When the RPMs rise, your idea of the bike quickly changes. This isn’t just a pretty face. Our test bike was fitted with the factory performance chip and slip on pipes. Eraldo Ferracci dyno tuned this bike personally and it puts out a genuine 122 horsepower at the rear wheel. When the RPMs get to about 9000 the bike develops a hard punch and by 10,000 you might as well be in an Indy car or at least on a closedcourse racetrack, because the bike rips. At high RPMs the MV as modified for this test is as fast as anything else out there.

The handling of the bike was very similar to that of a Ducati 996. The bike has that magically planted front end that you can trust with your life. At only 750cc and at a rather portly 440 lbs or so, one doesn’t expect the MV to compete that well on the track with GSXR 750s, 996 Ducatis or Aprilia RSVs. Well, that isn’t the case. This is a great handling bike and once the air is allowed to flow with the race kit exhaust and hotter chip, the MV will run with anything. Recently, a Fast Bikes road test of a GSXR 1000, Mille R, R1 Yamaha, 996S, and Honda CBR900 revealed some surprises. The liter-sized Japanese bikes had the fastest straightaway speeds but an MV Agusta F4 SPR model which should have about 3 horsepower more than our test bike, ran almost two seconds a lap faster than the fastest bike in their test, the big Suzuki 1000. The MV has the horsepower, it is just far up the RPM range. It also has world class handling that allows the rider to maintain higher corner speeds. Again, the MV is not just a pretty face.

There’s one more feature of the bike that you can’t enjoy by reading about it, it’s the sound. Fitted with the louder factory race pipes, once the MV gets up to about 10,000 RPM, we’re talking Indy car / Formula one howling. Your license won’t last long if you play this tune on the streets all the time, but I have to admit, this is one four cylinder that doesn’t give up anything to the twins in the music department. MV used to have a dyno video clip on their website with a soundtrack, check it out to hear for yourself.

Overall, I predict these bikes will remain decent investments. MV might bring out larger displacement bikes and they might delay production of any of them for prolonged periods, nobody knows. I doubt they’ll ever improve on the looks and no one but racers need any additional horsepower, so improved models with slightly more power shouldn’t decrease the value of the 2000 and 2001 models. If I owned one, I’d paint the wheels, swingarm and the frame gold so everyone would think I’d sprung for the $30,000 Oro model with magnesium wheels, swingarm and swingarm plates. Other than that, I’m not sure how you could improve one.

- Mark Barnett