Its angular lines and
aggressive looks fair
slap you in the face and
scream, ‘I dare you not to
notice me!’
k, I have something to admit... I’ve
always ridden dirt bikes. Back in the
day I was either racing on two-strokes
or trail/adventure riding on 350 four-
strokes (a Yamaha TT and later a Suzuki DR).
The latter seemed to have the right balance
of light weight and peppy power to tick all
the boxes. So... fast forward to the present
day and I’d got myself into the situation of
having to re-sit my bike license after letting
it lapse. Bugger.
Enter the KTM Duke 390, a light weight and
peppy ‘welterweight’ street fighter. Pretty
much as soon as I saw the 390 it had me
mesmerised, I mean I had seen plenty of
the first incarnation of both the 200 and 390
models on my commute to work, but this
was something else again. Looking like it
just burst out of the Japanese biker anime
Akira, its angular lines and aggressive looks
fair slap you in the face and scream, ‘I dare
you not to notice me!’ Well... it seems I may
have found the road-going equivalent of my
beloved 350 thumpers, but one that’s armed
106 KIWI RIDER
with high-tech teeth.
Having always admired sport bikes and
their brave and, seemingly, crazy pilots from
afar, I never really got to sling a leg over one.
In my mind a big sports bike led to either
a loss of license or a loss of life, neither of
which appeal to me. So I stayed well away
as I figured that with my love of speed I
may end up with one or both. So it was
with some interest that I eyed the smallish
capacity KTM…
Ok, lesson one. Don’t judge this book
by its cover. As soon as I had hopped
on the bike for my first ride two things
became apparent. Firstly, it is an extremely
comfortable bike to cruise around the
streets on. And two, it has got some get up
and go when it wants to! The upright riding
position is the typical naked bike these days,
although I fell into the trap of using my
motocross boots and found the toes-down
seating style made it tricky at first to select
gears – my fault on the boot choice.