VOL. 50 ISSUE 14 APRIL 9, 2013
The man behind
the brand: KTM's
Stefan Pierer.
P67
Winning!
Part I
Stefan Pierer is
arguably the most
powerful man in
European
motorcycling
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KTM AG
K
TM President/CEO Stefan Pierer
is the most powerful man in European motorcycling – a fact cemented by BMW Motorrad's shock sale
of Husqvarna to Pierer Industrie AG, his
personal holding company. But even
before Europe's two largest motorcycle
manufacturers ended up doing business with each other over the Germanowned, Italian-based, Swedish-born
off-road brand, each had posted record
production and sales records while
competing for the title of top dog in the
European motorcycle industry. The result has been that the crown of Europe's
largest motorcycle brand in terms of unit
sales now belongs KTM and not BMW,
handing that distinction to the Austrian
company in which Bajaj Auto, India's
second largest manufacturer, holds a 47
percent slice of the equity.
This came in a year when KTM's
success on the racetrack was never
greater, with Sandro Cortese defeating
the might of Honda to win the inaugural
Moto3 road racing World Championship
– KTM's first on tarmac – while Toni Cairoli (MX1) and Jeffrey Herlings (MX2),
completed a clean sweep of the Motocross World titles for the Austrian manufacturer. This was matched by a similar
dominance of the World Enduro Championship via Antoine Meo and Christophe Nambotin, with Pierre-Alexandre
Renet completing KTM's clean sweep
of the off-road titles by winning the Enduro2 crown on a Husaberg made in the
Austrian firm's Mattighofen factory. And
let's not forget Ryan Dungey's AMA National Motocross Championship – a first
for the brand.
The chance to meet Pierer in his
Mattighofen office for the first one-onone interview he'd given since acquiring Husqvarna, gave the background
behind this roll call of success, and his
plans to build on it for the future..
KTM enjoyed a spectacularly successful 2012. You won every World
Championship you contested, you
sold over 100,000 units for the first
time, and now you're number one
among European manufacturers in