I do not believe there is a more evocative production bike on earth. From every angle the Super Duke R visually screams, paws at the ground and snorts “Bring it, bastard!”
And that’s all well and good, but if its abilities didn’t match its looks it would be just another lame-duck design exercise. There’s no point looking like a demon made of hate if you’re a butterfly made of fluff, is there? But in the Super Duke R’s case, its ability not only matches expectations, it exceeds them.
It is KTM’s King-Beast and it can do it all.
KTM even put that Beast tag on the cover of its brochure. Beast 2.0 it called the Super Duke R.
So what has changed from last year’s model?
A few bits and pieces.
The entire package is more powerful, more refined, more electronically enhanced, better suspended, and KTM claims it is the most potent naked bike on earth.
I cannot argue with that.
KTM has gone to great lengths to ensure the potency sitting between your legs is not the kind of potency that will send you weeping in terror to your mother’s arms.
The new Super Duke R is, as far as KTM is concerned, all about controlled and controllable aggression.
To prove this point, it let me spend a day hammering it around the tight and technically challenging South Circuit at Sydney Motorsport Park. I would have dearly liked to lash the Beast over the full GP circuit, but it was not to be.
And quite frankly, the full circuit may have terrified me too much. The Super Duke R gives no ground to anything in terms of performance and ability.
The South Circuit ensured the speeds stayed relatively sane, and I got to concentrate on how the R handled and responded in a tighter riding environment.
Behold the numbers of the Beast.
It weighs 195kg dry, produces 130Kw at 9750rpm and 141Nm at 7000rpm.
I did several laps in just third gear. Then I did a few in fourth for the giggles, and then a few in second, just for the hell of it. It was amazing. The Super Duke R just dealt with it all – its motor redefines the term ‘tractable’.
The R’s combination of refinement and aggression is very bewitching, and hugely rewarding to ride. With every pulse of that astounding engine, the rider knows he’s sitting on something next-level special. Each time you open the throttle, the surge is breath-taking. The harder you crack it, the more you struggle to breathe. Ride it gently and it just does the job. Take it up a few notches and it’s good with that. Take it way past what you thought you could do and it’s perfectly at home doing that too.
This is an astonishing motorcycle.
It looked well-mental and went much the same as it looked when it was launched to a salivating world four years ago, and it’s now been improved and, well… distilled, I guess, even further. It is a major update, for sure.
It looks even nastier with that KISKA-designed headlight-and-running-light arrangement, and even more devilishly pointy body work.
The engine now boasts a far wider powerband (thanks to a 10mm-shorter intake tract), titanium valves and new combustion chambers to go with its higher compression ratio of 13.6:1, and it mainlines its gak through vast 56mm throttle bodies. It even gives you 500 more rpm at redline.
The suspension has been firmed-up front and rear and it sits on Metzeler MR7RR supersport hoops. The menu switches are backlit, the TFT dash is like the all-knowing, all-seeing Eye of Sauron, and you sit very much “in” it, hanging onto adjustable handlebars that are 20mm wider and five mm lower – so you’re hunched more forward, loading up that front wheel, and feeling even more nasty and aggro than before.
It revs with an eagerness that has to be experienced to be believed, and responds to your input with an aplomb that validates all the effort KTM has put into developing its Lord-Daddy road-bike.
I tried some weird stuff with it. My confidence levels were very high and I was feeling salty.
The South Circuit is that new bit of Sydney Motorsport Park no-one likes all that much, and it takes a bit of getting used to, but you never really get used to it. The wide downhill hairpin left followed by an off-camber uphill right-hand hairpin challenges me every time. And by challenges I mean makes me a bit retarded.
I take it wide, it feels crap. I take a tighter line, it feels crap. I try various combos and none of them feel right.
I want to take a jackhammer to it and beat the fool who designed it with the resultant lumps of bitumen. It’s a section that has no business pretending it’s a racetrack, but it makes for a superb testing facility for motorcycles like the Super Duke R.
On the R I tried lines I wouldn’t have dared attempt on other bikes, in gears that would be unthinkable. If you keep the R running over four grand, it’s already making more than 120Nm of torque – so pick a gear that makes you happy, even if it’s a higher one than you’d normally use, and just enjoy. The acceleration from four grand is stupid. Just stupid.
So I did that a lot because I like stupid.
It certainly might have looked messy, but somehow the bike absorbed my amateurish inputs and dealt with them. The clutch action is light, the change is sure and the fuelling so spot-on, you’ll forget the early days when that engine used to hunt like a hound looking for bunnies.
Like I said, KTM as applied itself to the Super Duke R with all its heart and soul.
So no matter what dumbness I tried on the Southern Circuit, the R always felt planted and sure, and while the road-racers on the launch had touchy moments on the stock rubber, I have nothing but praise for its grip.
It would certainly have been nice to give Beast 2.0 its head and see what wonders lived at the pointy end – but that is clearly a job for some deserted private road under controlled conditions sometime soon.
At the end of my day on the R, I couldn’t write the review. I struggled to articulate what I had experienced, so I let it sit untouched in my head for a while.
A few weeks passed and I rode a variety of other bikes, including Yamaha’s sensational MT-10SP, which is a direct competitor for the R. I rode last year’s Tuono RR, declared it to be the bike I would actually buy and die happy, because I thought it was better for my purposes than the old Super Duke R.
I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore. I will certainly lasso the new Tuono RR when I get a chance, just so I can remember, but where Aprilia has sat on its hands this year, KTM has not.
This is a bike that above all else is easy to ride. Far easier than something with this kind of performance has any right to be.
It is electronically sophisticated, and while it is not idiot-proof (what is?), it has your back when things get dark and freaky. You can ride it as a placid commuter and rejoice.
You can tour on it with grace and joy (it’s thirsty, but I don’t care), because it will drone up freeways all day with its cruise control and heated handlebar grips on, and slay any and all corners you want to put in its way.
You can scratch on it like a bison plagued with fleas. Like, seriously.
You want to get your mental on? Oh please. The Super Duke R was designed for just that kind of thing. Pro-crazy is in its DNA.
And when you park it in the fading light, take a few steps and turn to look at it, and you absorb its evil face, its feathered tyres, its stupid orange highlights, its pitchfork-thrust bodywork, and the myriad precision details that make it what it is, there won’t be a doubt in your mind you made the right choice.
It is the complete motorcycle. With 15,000km service intervals.
What a time to be alive, huh?
BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE…
One of the 1290 Super Duke Rs available that day had been fitted with a Performance Pack ($799). That got you a superb two-way quickshifter, motor slip regulation (that’s the ingenious thing that prevents the back wheel from locking up by applying minute bits of throttle for you while you’re busy praying to Jesus because you’re in trouble) and Smartphone integration via the KTM MY Ride program.
Got another $599?
Then KTM is happy to load your R with launch control, a more aggressive engine map with a Track option, that will also turn your anti-wheelie stuff off.
Have you bought two of them and wish to race one?
Certainly, sir. KTM’s PowerParts are for you. Full Akro systems, race seats, carbon everything, adjustable rear-sets, wave discs…yeah, no-one’s fooling around here.
See for yourself at
www.ktm.com/au/ktmpowerparts
SPECS
Engine: 2-cylinder, 4-stroke, V 75°
Displacement: 1301 cm³
Bore: 108 mm
Stroke: 71 mm
Power: 130 kW
Starter: Electric starter
Lubrication: Forced oil lubrication with 3 oil pumps
Transmission: 6-speed
Cooling: Liquid cooled
Clutch: PASC (TM) slipper clutch, hydraulically actuated
EMS: Keihin EMS with RBW and cruise control, double ignition
Fuel consumption: 5.57 l/100 km
Frame: Chromium-Molybdenum steel trellis frame, powder coated
Front suspension: WP USD Ø 48 mm
Rear suspension: WP monoshock
Suspension travel (front): 125 mm
Suspension travel (rear): 156 mm
Front brake: 2 x Brembo monoblock four-piston radial fixed calliper, brake discs, floating
Rear brake: Brembo twin-piston fixed calliper, brake disc
Front brake disc diameter: 320 mm
Rear brake disc diameter: 240 mm
ABS: Two-channel Bosch 9.1 MP ABS (incl. Cornering ABS and Supermoto mode Disengegable)
Chain: 525 X-Ring
Steering head angle: 65.1 °
Wheelbase: 1482 ± 15 mm
Ground clearance: 141 mm
Seat height: 835 mm
Tank capacity: approx18 litres
Dry weight: 195 kg
Colours: Black and some other colour that’s not black.
Words by Boris Mihailovic