Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127996
1999 KTM Duke /I FIrst Ride • By Alan Cathcart • I I III :f ~ i Q • 8l = ~ ~ S .., 16 A s the Naughty '90s draw to a close, few bikes sum up the contradictions of the past decade better than the KTM Duke. In an era when speed is king and performance rules, a single-cylinder street rod produced by the world's leading off-road manufacturer has delivered the most fun for the least power of any motorcyde with lights and a license plate. As 5000 fortunate owners (see "Duke dynasty" sidebar) will attest, this is minimalist madness that's a fun-biking freakout, inviting you to indulge in cornering, curb-jumping, street-racing and country-roading on a bike that does everything sporty that you tell it to do • both easily and immediately, except blast down a freeway at ton-up speeds. If that's what you want to do, go buy a race replica, but for almost every other kind of two-wheel laughs in the past half-decade, the KTM Duke has been the benchmark product. And now, it just got better. Unveiled at Intermot '98 and now entering production, the Duke II is a conscious effort by KTM to not only relaunch what is, after all, a 5-year-old concept with some fresh looks and uprated hardware (even though you could hardly accuse the original Duke of looking dated!) but to make it more of a road bike than a converted motocrosser - less street enduro, more street single. However, just to cover aU their bases - at • a·18 least in Europe - KTM has underpinned the new model with the LC4Supermoto, a halfway house between the Duke II and the company's Hard Enduro range. As such, it's the Austrian firm's exact equivalent of its Husqvarna rivals' SM610, complete with off-road styling, big front mudguard, longer-travel suspension (and therefore, a taller seat height) with conventional leading-axle WP forks, and about 15 pounds less weight than the Duke 11, while also producing 10-percentless power from the same 640-series (625cc) engine. The Supermoto is also available with the 2mm-shorter stroke 620cc motor (in fact, 61Occ), which just has a kickstart, whereas the Duke only comes one way, with the bigger engine and an electric leg. Second coming: KTM is hoping that its redesigned Duke II will continue to achieve the sales success that the Austrian company has enjoyed since introducing the Supermotard-style bike in 1994. Since then, 5000 units have been sold. Unfortunately, the Supermoto won't be coming to America. As a wimp who prefers to avoid reliving my years of kicking British and Italian singles into· action - especially when you stall it at idle while at a set of traffic lights in front of a line of cars just about the best thing KTM did to the Duke in the past five years of its Series One life was to fit the electric start three