If you find yourself admiring some of the extreme Supermoto or DUKE photographs on the KTM website, then there is a good chance that one of those riders in the frame is Lukas Höllbacher. Not only is the Austrian a world championship racer and deft hand with his motorcycle skills but leads a curious double life; he helms one of his country’s oldest surviving businesses. We asked the 25-year old to explain a bit more…
As we are looking for the ULTIMATE DUKE RIDER through a Social Media contest, we’ve asked a few well-known DUKE personalities to tell us what it takes to be crowned as the ultimate DUKE pilot.
Gran Canaria – beginning of March. Media launch of the new KTM 790 DUKE. The journalists are totally obsessed with the latest addition to the DUKE family. Its razor-sharp handling has earned the 790 its own nickname – “The Scalpel”. The new 790 plugs the gap between the 690, the most powerful single-cylinder on the market, and the “Beast”, the KTM 1290 SUPER DUKE R with more than double the power. The complete genealogy of the 790 was on display in all its glory at a presentation at an aircraft hangar, beginning with the original DUKE, which was replaced as the KTM 640 DUKE “last edition” by the DUKE II exactly 20 years ago.
Freestyle stunt rider Rok Bagoroš began his professional career in 2011 with the KTM 125 DUKE. Since then, he’s performed around the world on every single cylinder DUKE in the range. KTM BLOG caught up with the Slovenian rider to see what he thinks to the recently updated KTM 125 DUKE, KTM 250 DUKE and KTM 390 DUKE and to ask him what he loves about the new generation and what made the previous models so good for stunting.
Product Management are a department within KTM tasked with the difficult responsibility of juggling all the subdivisions within KTM – Marketing, Sales, Production, R&D, Kiska Design, KTM PowerParts … Using their collective experience of motorcycling, engineering and customer behavior, their purpose is to make sure that new or updated KTM products are introduced to the market in a way that satisfies the core values of KTM, hit the initial concept target and excel the expectations of the end user. Managing this mammoth myriad of motorcycle must-haves for the exciting new KTM 790 DUKE was the task of Adriaan Sinke, so the KTM BLOG grabbed a chat with him.
It seems very simple: you twist a throttle every day and at the end of the month somebody puts money in your bank account for it. What a wonderful existence.
KTM expend a vast amount of resources and cash to enter tracks from Dakar to Doha. Like most companies they take valuable benefit from their racing exploits. We asked the Vice Presidents in R&D at Mattighofen for some more details …
We continue to put the board of directors under the spotlight and this month we catch up with the 55 year old Chief Operating Officer to talk some nuts and bolts of KTM.
From 125 to 1301cc, the current KTM DUKE range is as wide-ranging and diverse as ever in 2015. The KTM BLOG attended the ‘DUKE IT’ media event in Thailand to ride the six-strong line-up back-to-back and found out more about the many changes that KTM’s first global superstar – the 390 DUKE – receives this year.
Winter Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller is passionate about winter sport and motorcycles – now she is official allowed to ride KTM bikes.
