1190 Adventure Day 9: What we know…
The third group of testers at the 1190 Adventure press launch here in Tenerife turns out pretty colourful again. We have journalists from Great Britain, Holland and France getting to grips with the capable bars of our adventure bike, but also media from Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Ecuador and Chile. We’ve had some enthusiastic comments already, so here we go with some questions (and answers) that were thrown at us during the day…
How long was the development period of the new 1190 Adventure?
Three years or around 130,000 working hours. That comes close to 80 ‘man years’. In other words a single engineer would have had to invest 80 years of work.
How much people have been involved in the development side of things?
About 180 people from KTM Entwicklungszentrum (technical development centre) in Mattighofen, where actually 260 people are working.
Why does KTM use a chain and not a shaft-drive for this bike?
Very simple. Because it is: a) much lighter, b) enables a more dynamic ride along with more direct feeling, c) takes less power away, and d) a super-high quality x-ring-chain is used on the Adventure (which even in internal KTM long term testing easily lasted 30,000km) and e) overall a chain for secondary drive from our point of view is the best solution for a no-compromise Sport-Travel-Motorcycle.
Why no cruise control on the new Adventure? (no kidding…)
Because maybe we have to get used to that thought first. So yeah, why not at some point?
When the bike will hit the dealer showrooms?
Basically in most countries from spring. Which means early February at some dealers but mostly in March. In some European countries maybe later. Bikes for customer test rides will be available of course.
How about the R-model?
The worldwide press launch is being done with the standard 1190 Adventure. At dealers the R-models will arrive directly in the slipstream of the standard version. Also from the R-Model test bikes at the dealers will be made available.
When KTM will bring out the new 1290 Super Duke?
We are busy getting it ready for production. Presents will be handed out for Christmas 2013.
After the highly successful road racing project with Moto3 how about future engagements with MotoGP?
The MotoGP category is not an area for KTM at the moment. By defending our success in Moto3 and also with 19 other world championship titles from last year, we have more than enough racing-and-sport workload ahead of us!
To be continued…
