Australian Motorcycle News - June 21, 2018

44 amcn.com.au

That engine configuration has starred in so
many bland built-to-a-price machines that I
just couldn’t feel excited about such an engine
powering a KTM Duke, a bike known for barely
tamed fuel-burners trying to burst out of tightly
built chassis.
I was disheartened. It simply couldn’t work;
KTM had sold out, finally. But perhaps the fact
the 620 Duke I owned contained a raucous
single-cylinder bursting out of its skin every
time I kicked it into life should have given me
more faith... KTM doesn’t know how to build
bland engines.
Pushing the start button for the first time,
I was rewarded with the sound of something
that wants to rip out of the chassis and explode
between your legs with delight.
The LC8c idles like a snorty dragon. It’s no
mistake it feels like that, of course. KTM spent
many man-hours finding ways to make the
budget and size-conscious powerplant fit the
KTM mould after trying and failing to create
a V-twin small and cheap enough to work in
a mid-size machine aimed to compete with
three-cylinder machines such as the Yamaha
MT-09 and Triumph Street Triple.
A 435-degree firing interval combines with
75-degree offset crank-pins – unlike how
other manufacturers are trying to spice up
their parallel twins – to emulate KTM’s V-Twin
character.

Parallel twins are easier to package into
a motorcycle than almost anything else
and, balancing challenges aside, if you can
make them feel and sound like a V-Twin, why
wouldn’t you?
KTM has done a great job here. This bike
pokes you in the fun bone like other Orange
bikes, and the engine keeps the bike small and
compact. I reckon KTM has done such a good
job with the motor that it should have kept the
Super Duke moniker for this ‘small’ bike. It
deserves it.
In doing so, they also kept clean an area that
only recent KTMs have managed to iron out

• the bottom-end. A mid-sized bike needs to
  fuel sweetly from deep in the rev basement and
  into the mid-range to be properly useable, and
  this parallel twin does that. The fuelling and
  f ly-by-wire throttle response is so sweet off the
  bottom it makes the useable rev range really
  broad and the bike therefore feels beyond its
  cubes. It’s 900-like.
  The shenanigans I got up to for the
  photoshoot happened only 30 minutes after
  I got on the bike – it’s so easy to ride and so
  intuitive that I didn’t need any more than that

KTM 790 DUKE

Thebikeisamixofbig

and small, looks-wise.

The seat looks big, the

tank looks small and,

depending on the angle,

the bike looks both!

To ride, it feels right.

I reckon it could be

brighter, but enamoured

owners won’t care.

One size fits all

The engine idles

like a snorty dragon

and sounds like it

wants to explode

between your legs

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