KTM in 25 years of 1000PS: from mud-plugger to beast

"Nobody is indifferent to this machine – some will love it, others will hate it." That's what 1000ps.at wrote in November 2004, in the first big test of the 990 Super Duke. Twenty years later, the editorial team sat on the 1390 Super Duke R and wrote: "They used to put monkeys and dogs in rockets, shoot them into space and see what happened to them. And that's pretty much how my day went." In between lie more than 550 articles, 554 videos and a brand we had to get to know from scratch several times. From mud-plugger to street beast, from latecomer to pioneer, from value-for-money champion to restructuring proceedings and back to the start line. This is not a corporate chronicle. It's what we said back then. And how much of it still holds today.

Honestly: in our early years, KTM was, to us, an off-road company that was just learning to like tarmac. The 1000PS archive on KTM starts in 2004 with a sigh: "The Mattighofen crew kept us waiting a long time for the new Superduke. But now it's here – and the wait was worth it." In 2004 I rode the KTM 990 Super Duke on Fuerteventura, a 370-kilometre test ride, and at 1.85 metres tall I fitted the machine like a glove. The engine? "Addictive! With 120 hp you can really get up to every kind of nonsense." The design came "once again from the pen of Kiska" and immediately polarised. Remember that. It comes back in 2026.

What struck us back then was less the technology than the people. In 2007, 1000PS wrote about the people behind the Super Duke R: "KTM's R&D department is full of petrol-crazed speed freaks, and they needed a new toy. Now we all get to play." You can hardly describe a company more beautifully. But price was an issue from the very start, a compliment with an aftertaste. In 2008, comparing the 690s and 990s, we wrote: "It has clearly shed the cheap mud-plugger image. Probably also because it isn't cheap." Put bluntly: even back then, orange hurt the wallet a little. Get used to this refrain, dear KTM fans. It runs through all 25 years, and over the course of the story it gets louder rather than quieter.

The same year brought the RC8, for us "the final step to becoming a full-range manufacturer". A superbike of its own from Mattighofen – a statement aimed at everyone who still pictured KTM in the mud. Half a year later came the sober verdict: "Sales of the orange superbike are still lagging behind expectations. It's more expensive than the Japanese litre bikes." The truth: in 2008 KTM could build anything. Whether customers would buy everything was a completely different question. We'll run into that question again and again in this story, sometimes quietly, sometimes with full force. But first came a phase in which the orange brigade got almost everything right. And this time we were there with the camera.

In 2010 we started filming more intensively; the first KTM clips had a median length of just over three minutes. In 2013 that changed overnight: 62 KTM videos in one year, more than twice as many as the year before. The reason had two names. The first: 1190 Adventure. "A new era begins. KTM opens the taps even further and washes the competition away," we wrote in February 2013. In the video against the BMW R 1200 GS we admitted going into the test "a little biased", and stayed honest: "There the GS is still unbeaten. With its extra power, the KTM simply leans more towards riding dynamics. But it falls short on touring comfort." Plain words, even if they were aimed at an orange great white hope.

Then, in autumn 2013, came the sentence that surprised us most about KTM: "KTM actually jumped on the moving train rather late. BMW and Honda had long since taken the lead when it came to ABS." Harsh words for a brand that has "Ready to Race" emblazoned on its banners. But the same article brought the turnaround. After an emergency stop at 45 degrees of lean with the new cornering ABS, it read: "Never before has technical progress been made so easy to use and experience." Picture it for a second: 45 degrees of lean, and then slamming on the brakes. That's exactly the moment every one of us respects, from beginner to track-day hooligan. Overnight, the latecomer had become the pioneer. Not a bad autumn for Mattighofen!

The second name: 1290 Super Duke R. The video verdict from October 2013 was one of our clearest ever: "This is now the vehicle to beat in the naked bike segment." No ifs, no buts. And then there was the little one. About the 390 Duke, we asked the KTM manager in 2013, half joking: "… the ABS system, and then you wanted 5,000 euros for it. Won't you have to file for bankruptcy soon?" The answer came dry: "No need to worry, it's possible because we have a cooperation with Bajaj." Back then, a punchline. Today that passage reads differently, very differently. Hold on to that name – it turns up at the end of this story at a point where nobody was laughing.

In 2014 we had still written: "There's no bike that can beat this weapon." Then came the BMW S 1000 R, and the duel ended with a "wafer-thin win for the SuperDuke". A year later our comparison test opened with a question we would never have asked in 2013: "Is the KTM Super Duke 1290 still the ruler of the big naked bike class?" And money finally became the refrain. In a 2017 video: "At the weekend I fired up the KTM configurator. And added everything I'd like to have on the Super Duke. And then in the bottom right corner it said 24,000-something." You know that moment, right? You click and click, and at the end a number stares back at you that roars louder than any exhaust. The Super Duke was still brilliant. But the price question just wouldn't go away.

The real turning point of those years was a middleweight. At the first test of the 790 Duke in March 2018 came the sentence that has shaped our view of power ever since: "Basically, there's nothing faster on the road than an agile bike with a very well-sorted, sharp 100 hp." In the summer we followed up in a video: "What KTM has achieved for the first time in its history: they've created a must-have effect. You hop on, it burbles, it does its thing, it just works. All the rider aids are there, everything's there. Buy." The archive confirms the gut feeling: of the airtime we devoted to KTM model ranges in 2018, almost two thirds went to the Duke 690/790. Pub-talk counts horsepower. In 2018 we counted grins.

Two sentences from those years deserve to be recorded because they contradict each other. 2018, on the 690 Duke in the mountains: "One cylinder is not dead, it still has its place. – From your lips to God's ears, and to the ears of KTM's engineers." Half a year later, on the 790 Adventure in Morocco: "The air is getting thinner for singles … could this one day mean the end for the 690s." In the same piece came the first real criticism of a KTM promise: "KTM explained to us that this is now sort of like a hard enduro with the riding comfort of a touring liner. Of course, in hard off-road terrain that wasn't quite the case." Hand on heart: if you promise both, you have to be measured against both.

In 2021 we talked about KTM more than ever: 15.3 percent of our total chapter airtime on YouTube that year was devoted to the brand. But at the same time, the verdicts grew more cautious. In the big adventure bike comparison of 2021 we said: "Frankly, I don't feel any of these bikes offers good value for money. I find them all insanely expensive." And in May 2023, on the 790 Duke, came the sentence that marks the turning point: "The KTM is a fantastic bike. But by comparison – it used to be the value-for-money champion – the others are now the better choice on value." The former value-for-money champion was no longer one. That hurts, precisely because the bike itself has stayed fantastic. The Duke didn't get worse. The others got better.

About the group, which was just buying into MV Agusta and producing in China with CFMOTO, we wrote in December 2022: "Let's not kid ourselves – anyone who wants to be big in the motorcycle business and get even bigger has to produce efficiently, and ideally very cheaply too." Two years later, size was no longer on the agenda. On 26 November 2024, 1000PS reported the restructuring proceedings. Twelve days later we answered ten viewer questions in a video, and the last one was the most important: "What's next for KTM in 2025? Clear answer: no idea." We did the maths: a KTM enduro had become 36 percent more expensive in ten years, with inflation in Austria at 37 percent. "Cold comfort."

In January 2025, when the long-standing boss stepped down, we asked the question of the year: whether KTM can keep up its claim "Ready to Race" "or whether in future it will have to be 'Here to Stay'". At the end of February, three days after the creditors' decision, came a commitment with a condition: "KTM leads the way in its share of genuine users. These employees, who stand on the assembly line and sweat on steep slopes with their own enduros at the weekend, come back and know what needs improving." But also: "It must never again happen that a customer with a problem gets fobbed off for months." That's love with open eyes. That's exactly how you should talk about a brand that matters to you: honest, demanding and without slamming the door.

In 2024 we also looked back. About the first Super Duke, after laps at the Pannoniaring: "Back then, with the first generation, it was awesome and fascinating, but really fast? No. The bike wasn't stable." And about the new 990 Duke: it "really picks up where the first Super Duke started. That first 990 Super Duke had roughly twice the fuel consumption, with otherwise similar performance figures." Right up to the afterthought: "Why doesn't everyone just ride their Super Duke – until you look at the price tag." There it is again, the refrain. Still, the circle closes: the naked bike that made KTM a road brand in 2004 is back in 2024. Only this time it's finished.

In February 2026 we reported the split from Kiska: "Hardly any brand in the motorcycle segment relied so consistently on a recognisable design language. At the same time, the design was repeatedly the subject of controversy in the market." We had written exactly that back in 2004, just much more briefly: "Nobody is indifferent to this machine." Twenty-two years separate the two sentences, and they mean the same thing. Kiska gave KTM a face people could argue about, and that's exactly where its strength lay. Those who loved it bought orange. Those who hated it talked about it anyway. What the next face will look like, our archive doesn't reveal yet. One thing is clear, though: the bar is high, and the new design centre has to clear it first.

An archive is merciless because it remembers what you said. In 2011, KTM Austria's boss told us at EICMA: "The path leads from supermoto towards naked bikes." He was right. The Duke family from 690 to 990 became the second-largest KTM model range in our videos after the Super Adventure. Then our joke about the 5,000-euro Duke in 2013: "Won't you have to file for bankruptcy soon?" Eleven years later came the restructuring proceedings, and the partner KTM named back then as its answer became the rescuer in 2025: Bajaj. And the 2014 "weapon" that no bike could beat? It lasted four months, until the S 1000 R lost by only a whisker. In 2024, on the 990 Duke, we asked ourselves who still needs "the Super Duke above it".

On singles, we argued both sides in 2018 and 2019: "One cylinder is not dead" versus "The air is getting thinner for singles". When KTM ramped production back up in July 2025, the 690 Enduro R and 690 SMC R were among the first models. Point to the mountain rider! On the electric question, in 2019 and 2021 we bet on no big electric KTMs: "Here's the sensation: nothing!" As of 03.09.2026, the 1000PS archive contains no big electric KTM, only the Freeride E. And in 2022 we feared with MV Agusta that "the traditional company will be swallowed whole". In February 2025, MV Agusta was sold off again. Our clearest wrong forecast. The only constant over 25 years? The price: 2008 "more expensive than the Japanese litre bikes", 2017 "24,000-something", 2023 "used to be the value-for-money champion".

In May 2026, on the first quarterly report after the rescue, we wrote: "The acute existential question seems to have been answered by Bajaj's support. Now comes the much harder task of turning the rescue into a sustainable industrial restart." Put bluntly: we don't know what the next 25 years will bring. An archive can look back, not forward. But we've known since 2004 that this brand never left us indifferent. We've celebrated it and criticised it, we've been wrong and we've been right, and every time something new came out of Mattighofen, we took a good look again. With a bike, that's half the battle. With a brand, it's the whole thing.

In October 2001, 1000PS.at went online as Nils Müller's diploma thesis project at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt. It has grown into a platform that combines motorcycle journalism, community and digital solutions for the industry. For our 25th anniversary in October 2026, this series looks back at how motorcycle brands have evolved – drawing on a quarter of a century of our own reporting, plenty of kilometres ridden ourselves and the curiosity that has driven us since day one: what's next?