With a 150-cc engine, fantastic brakes, sticky tyres and Italian good looks we finally have a scooter that’s built for a good time

Story: Anosh Khumbatta
Photography: Sanjay Raikar

The scooter market in India has so far revolved around family-oriented vehicles; softly sprung and comfortable enough to drop the kids to school, and with enough space for a week’s shopping on the floorboard. The family workhorse has certainly evolved from the old two-stroke Kinetic Hondas to modern automatic scooters, with sculpted panels and snazzy colours to make them a little more fun. Scooters are surely fun, but we have never really considered them sporty… until now.
Italian marque Aprilia has had a presence in the Indian market for two years now, offering us some very exclusive, very expensive and very powerful European-built superbikes; and now they have presented us with a stylish, sporty and affordable scooter: the Aprilia SR 150. The bike is quite a looker and when viewed head-on seems slimmer than most scooters available here today. The divided headlights resemble a frown and are positioned low to lend some aggressiveness to the forward visage, while up top, between the turn signals, is the company’s branding and the colours of the Italian flag. As we all know, placing these colours on any vehicle immediately makes it look faster, and it works here too. Under the slightly protruding nose unit is the chunky 120 section Vee Rubber tyre, mounted on a 14-inch black alloy, clearly portraying this scooter’s sporty ambitions. This sporty stance is even more obvious from the side; those larger-than-usual wheels, telescopic fork and disc brake up front look like they mean business. The overall design melds sharp angles up front with gentle curves flowing towards the rear; this along with the well-thought-out graphics and dual-tone seat all work together to make this one attractive scoot.