Chinese Police Using Aprilia Mana Motorcycles to Escort Henry Kissinger

Piaggio Group has recently secured a deal with China, which saw a fleet of Aprilia Mana 850 GT bikes supplied to the Chongqing police. No less that thirty of those bikes were used to escort the former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger on a visit to China.

The thirty Aprilia Mana bikes used by the Chongqing police force have been customised to meet the authority’s service requirements.

The Aprilia Mana 850 comes fitted with an innovative SportGear automatic transmission, ideal for urban use, that can be used as either an electronic sequential gear change in a seven-speed manual set-up, or as an automatic set-up with three settings: Touring, Sport and Rain.

Powering the bike is an 850cc, twin-cylinder, water cooled unit with electronic ignition, capable of developing 76 bhp at 8,000 rpm.

“The Piaggio Group won the order through Piaggio Zongshen Foshan Motorcycle Co. Ltd., the joint venture active on the Chinese market in which Piaggio and China’s Zongshen motorcycle group each own 45%. The residual 10% is held by the Municipality of Foshan, Guangdong Province, where the joint venture is headquartered Chongqing is China’s largest direct-controlled Municipality, with the status of province. Its population currently stands at more than 32 million, with 3.4 million people resident in the Municipality’s urban area,” Piaggio explains.

Kissinger’s visit marked the 40th anniversary since his first visit to the People’s Republic of China, which paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, putting an end to 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility.