Ktm Creates A Monster

KTM CREATES A MONSTER

FIVE YEARS AFTER BEING rescued from near-death by a partnership consisting of four of its overseas distributors and Swiss investment house Exantra AG, Austrian off-road specialist KTM is making inroads into the streetbike market.

Production of the company’s single-cylinder Duke street rod rose from 800 units in 1995 to 1300 last year, and still the market cries out for more. Unfortunately for Duke fans, KTM’s four-stroke dirtbikes are in such strong demand, there hasn’t been enough production capacity at the factory to build more Dukes. That should change for the better this year, as overall production is expected to reach 20,000 units-up from 16,000 in 1996, and just 5600 four years earlier.

Still, there’s more to come. Says company boss Kalman Cseh, “We realize we must expand our range. Twentythousand units annual production is about the ceiling for an exclusively singlecylinder model range, so we’ve got to start working on twincylinder models using our own engines-which is exactly what we’re doing. It takes time and money to develop a new multicylinder four-stroke engine, but work is well underway.”

Though Cseh won’t reveal the format of the new KTM twin-cylinder motor, spy photos show a liquid-cooled, narrow-angle V-Twin, fitted with a balance shaft and, perhaps, fuel injection. (KTM is known to have had an EFI development program running with a specialist German consulting house for the past three or four years.) The first two twincylinder models are expected to be a large-displacement version of the Duke, and a hardedged enduro bike with which KTM can take on Yamaha’s Twins in the Dakar Rally.

Alan Cathcart