K TM 390 ADVENTURE PROTOT YPE
R I D E R E V I E W
P78
That's despite the challenging road
surfaces found throughout India, which a
street enduro's longer-travel suspension
would ideally cope with, and the traffic-
clogged cities through which a taller
seat height is beneficial in helping plot
a course—let alone the glorious adven-
ture riding possibilities throughout the
sub-continent. One can only conject
that the advent in the past two years of
the 411cc Royal Enfield Himalayan and
Indian-built BMW G310 GS may have
helped change his mind—that, and Ste-
fan Pierer's talents for persuasion.
For that absence is now being ad-
dressed, with the launch at this year's EIC-
MA Milan Show of the first small-capacity
KTM go-anywhere bike, the 390 Adventure
due to hit dealer showrooms in March next
year, which, while primarily developed in
KTM's R&D Center at its Mattighofen HQ,
will be entirely manufactured in India.
While using the 390 Duke as a platform,
its distinctive design is also derived from
the company's dominant KTM Rally bikes,
which have won the iconic Dakar race for
the past 18 years in a row. Indeed, it can
justly be claimed that with such Rally events
limited to 450cc bikes since 2011, the 390
Adventure is more closely related to KTM's
serial race-winning off-roaders than its
larger-capacity parallel-twin 790 Adven-
ture and V-twin 1290 Super Adventure
models are.
The chance to be the first outsider to
ride the pre-production version of the
new model some weeks before its EICMA
launch, unveiled a bike which promises
to be a genuine multi-purpose entry-level
motorcycle, rather than a lookalike styling
exercise or a neo-retro nostalgia bike.
"We'd been talking about produc-
ing an Adventure based on a Bajaj-built
Slotting the
372cc motor
into the
Adventure
chassis will
make for three
models in the
390 range—
Duke, 390R
and Adventure.
