MV Agusta launches Lucky Explorer adventure bike line

Photo: MV Agusta

As promised, MV Agusta has taken the wraps off its new line of adventure bikes. The Lucky Explorer series has two machines for 2022, the big-bore Lucky Explorer 9.5 and the smaller Lucky Explorer 5.5. In their own way, each is a very modern motorcycle, but both are also designed to recall the glory days of the Cagiva Elefant desert bikes, and their success in events like the Dakar Rally. MV Agusta now owns the Cagiva brand, and wants to bring back those glory days with these new machines.

Lucky Explorer 9.5

This is the flagship of the line, at least for now, with a big-bored and stroked version of the company’s 800 cc triple. Actually, there’s more to it than that—many of the internals are updated as well, to handle adventure touring duty. There’s a new hydraulic clutch, with Rekluse clutch and electronically-managed gearbox offered as options.

The frame itself is steel, with clever retractable mounting points for luggage. We haven’t seen much information about the suspension yet, but we can tell you there’s a 21-inch front wheel and 18-inch rear, which means this should handle gravel duty with aplomb.

In the press shots, you can see MV Agusta threw a skid plate, handguards and other offroad armour on this bike, which also tips its offroad capability, like the original Elefant.

But, like the original Elefant the new Lucky Explorer 9.5 is intended to handle long distances comfortably. It also comes with modern electro-tech that should be on par with the Euro competition; at this point, all we know for sure is that there’s a 7-inch TFT dash, but we would expect an IMU-powered safety package to go with that.

While we’d expect the Lucky Explorer 9.5 to eventually make it to Canada, don’t expect it anytime soon, and don’t expect it to be cheap.

Lucky Explorer 5.5

MV Agusta has been promising a more affordable parallel twin engine, and now we see it arriving in this bike. Unsurprisingly, it’s built with help from a Chinese partner (QJ Motors); MV Agusta says it’s refined the design and improved it for its usage in this bike.

Details are scant, but it seems MV Agusta intends to sell this in developed markets, although it’s also likely intended as an aspirational model for developing markets. The press release seems to hint we’ll see some sort of safety electronics onboard (ABS and traction control at least, probably leaning-sensitive). And, that’s pretty much it.

It’s hard to say whether we’ll see this machine in Canada; on one hand, it could suffer the same fate as other Chinese middleweights, and be considered too hard to sell in our market. On the other hand, if MV is really keen to push its new twin line, it’s possible we’ll see the 5.5 and other models with this engine start coming to our shores in coming months.

1 COMMENT

  1. Maybe its me, but this looks veeeeerrry similar to the Honda Africa Twin….. quite the compliment though as the AT is a winning formula!

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