Legendary tuner car company Brabus has teamed up with KTM, and the resulting motorcycle sold out in minutes.
It all started with rumours of a KTM/Brabus team-up a while back, with the Super Duke 1290 platform supposedly serving as the base for this build. This was bold new ground for Brabus; the German company has focused on cars, not bikes, for years. However, spy shots started popping up, and then we saw the whole bike confirmed last week.
As expected, Brabus confirmed it was using a KTM 1290 Super Duke as the base of the new Brabus 1300R naked bike. That means it’s getting the LC8 V-twin engine, making around 180 horsepower in standard trim (perhaps Brabus found some extra ponies somewhere?). Brabus tells us the machine comes with five ride modes (Street, Sport, Rain, Performance, Track), and it sounds as if it’s based on the EVO variant of the Super Duke (see our write-up on that machine here).
WP Apex semi-active suspension comes standard; there’s also a WP steering damper. You’d expect that from a KTM-sourced machine.
The bike comes with several Brabus-built parts as well, including 9-spoke forged wheels, a slip-on double-pipe exhaust, custom-made heated seat, and CNC-machined triple clamps, adjustable levers and footpegs and other trim. There’s also a decent coating of carbon-fibre bodywork, (including skid plate, trick air ducts and headlight mask), and we’d expect Brabus also built that.
You can see the end result of all the customization in the video above; it looks expensive, but KTM’s pre-order page doesn’t list a price.
What the page does say, though, is that the Brabus 1300R is already sold-out. In fact, the limited production run of 154 machines sold out in 115 seconds. Wild, but if you’ve got a wallet full of cash and you really, really want one, you can get onto the waiting list, in case one of the pre-order customers backs out. More details here!
