Highway performance is effortless, with the Katoom feeling sweet and unstressed at a 120/130 cruising speed. 120 kph has the 390’s motor spinning at a smooth 6,500 revs, so if you need to overtake you accelerate right into the meatiest part of the torque curve. The much loved Suzuki DR400 makes 37,5 horses. To put that in perspective, the 2022 fuel injected KLR 650 makes 40 horsepower. During my two weeks with the 390 Adventure, I effortlessly got three times that! The punchy 373cc liquid-cooled, 4–valve Twincam single generates a fit 43,5 horses at 9500 revs and 35,3 Nm of torque at 7,000 rpm. Your average commuter cage will give you around 10 k’s to a litre in urban sprawl. How viable is it to consider a motorcycle and dispense with the second family car? I know I’m preaching to the converted, but really guys, do the maths. Durban was ¾ of a tank away at a fuel cost of R9! Our cost of living has way outstripped the official quoted inflation rate. By comparison, my little Datsun 1200 GX cost R12 rand to fill back in 1973. Filling my Suzuki Vitara’s 66-litre tank sets me back a staggering R1200 rand odd. A weak rand has caused our fuel price to soar to over R18 a litre. We are also suffering the dire economic effects of a global pandemic. Bikes with the ability to traverse varied terrain, therefore, make huge sense. We in South Africa are blessed with amazing weather and endless countryside to explore. Is this bike up for serious adventure riding and user friendly enough for day to day riding, or is it a window-dressing exercise by the Austrian manufacturer to lure wannabe adventure riders? I convinced KTM to give me two weeks with their little Adventure to find some answers. Enter KTM’s smallest adventure bike, their 390. A forgotten fun factor is also re-emerging. Current thinking is aiming at an increasing number of ‘middleweight’ bikes that are more user friendly, less complex and lighter, making them easier to use. The penalty is cost, complexity and the nemesis of adventure bikes, weight. Electronics can tame the crazy performance and make them safer for the less experienced riders out there to use. Large capacity bikes have become extremely complex and technical innovations with companies trying to make them usable for a wide audience. KTM has, for a long while, built what are widely considered to be the most off-road capable adventure bikes around. Apart from the aforementioned Asian and African countries where they are still incredibly popular. The World has been conned into thinking that bigger is invariably better and small capacity bikes tend to be scoffed at. Over time, as technology has progressed, motorcycles have evolved into a unique form of lifestyle vehicle. They are affordable to buy and cheap as chips to run and maintain. Factor in a high percentage of the population that has to make do on a moderate income and small motorcycles start to offer a viable and practical solution for urban mobility. This is true for many Asian and a few African countries too. With a crazy number of people, urban congestion is a fact of life. To a certain degree, it is still so in some countries. There was a time where motorcycles were simply an economical, versatile form of transport. In fact, with the 21/18-inch, the ground clearance appears to have gone up compared to the current model’s 200mm.It is interesting to see how the world of motorcycling has developed over time. This component is unique to the 390 Adventure, primarily to increase the ground clearance. The new swingarm isn’t shared with its siblings. Honda CB650R Review: All Chill And No Thrill? These updates seem to have altered the riding ergonomics of the motorcycle to make it more offroad-friendly.Ģ022 KTM 390 Adventure Spotted At Dealerships Prior To Launch The changes are quite similar to the new-generation KTM 390 Duke that was spotted testing. The test mule spotted not just sported wire-spoke rims but also had a reworked chassis and all-new swingarm. So, expect an updated standard variant with alloy wheels, while this could be the top trim. This could very well be the ‘R’ variant – a suffix given to more purpose-built models in KTM’s lineup. New spy shots of a hardcore, spoked rims-equipped KTM 390 Adventure have surfaced on the internet.
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