KTM’s new 800cc adventure motorcycle has been spied for the first time in Europe. The prototype wore minimum clothes making us believe that this is the first time the mule has left company’s R&D facility.
KTM’s new 800cc parallel twin platform is a big project that’ll see the company foraying into new segments. In fact, a couple of days ago, we got you the spy pictures of the 800 Duke mule, which looked production ready. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same thing for this 800 Adventure. While the two images fail to give a lot of information, it’s clear that the test mule gets the same swingarm as the 800 Duke. This new adventure gets an all-new chassis, exhaust system, fuel tank and the fascia. It’s obvious that a lot of components will be shared between the naked and the adventure to keep costs in check, however, the production version of the latter is expected to wear less clothes to be more agile and light weight.
The tyres seen on this bike are not really proper off-road tyres, but are more focused to do a bit of road riding as well as off-roading. Just like all the adventure bikes in KTM’s portfolio, the 800 Adventure will also get an aluminium bash plate. The brake setup – both front and rear also looks like it’s borrowed from its naked cousin. It gets a single long seat, unlike the split seats on the other models.
We believe KTM will only showcase the Duke 800 this year, maybe at the 2016 EICMA and keep the 800 Adventure for mid next year. Why? Because there’s also the new KTM 200s and the 390s that will be launched this year. So too many product launches in the same year doesn’t make sense. But the main question, will the new KTM 800 Adventure come to India? Definitely not for the next two years.
Stay tuned!
Image source : MCN
