Since 2003 KTM has had a big Adventure Enduro on offer. This year KTM has treated Adventure fans with the latest 999cc engine from 990 Superduke. We attended the world launch at the far away Island of Fuerteventura on the west coast of North Africa. If you look the Canary Islands up on a map you will see that the Islands are parallel with the greatest desert in the world, Sahara. KTM had a great adventure awaiting the lucky journalists that had made the journey from all over the world.
Words: Tor Sagen/Photography: Redeye, Peuker and Halwax
KTM’s 950 Adventure has not been as big a sales success as BMW’s R1200 GS. KTM has gone from being a small niche producing manufacturer that produced 8.000 units in 1992 to last years 80.000 units. This makes KTM Europe’s second largest manufacturer of big motorcycles after BMW. To try and change the situation KTM launched both 990 Adventure with ABS and 990 Adventure S Dakar on a perfect location both for on and off-road riding. In the programme were twisty mountain passes, motorway, miles of gravelled roads and a beach challenge. Could the new 990 Adventure ABS handle it?
The riding startedwith some fast and twisty motorway miles. The local police were looking closely so I waited until I was off the main roads before exploring the new engine fully. The new ABS system from Bosch/Brembo can be switched on and off and I chose to start without ABS to be able to compare. I cruised on the motorway first to get a feel with the new engine. After all, it is the engine and ABS brakes that are the most important news on this model. From standstill the new fuel injected engine accelerates smoothly into the max torque area between 5.000 rpm to 7.000 rpm. Max torque is 95Nm at 6.500 rpm. The midrange is beefy, as a matter of fact beefier than 990 Superduke up to 7.000 rpm. The max power figure remains the same as the old 950, but the torque is increased over the whole range for more usable power. This is exactly what you need on a model like the 990 Adventure. In the mountain passes I put the engine through its paces and the fuel injected engine responds beautifully from 4.000 rpm followed by the flexible midrange that allows you to float on and off the throttle in a higher gear rather than shifting down and braking hard before each bend. When slow speed control is necessary I found the throttle to be too light. Small bumps in the road upset the right hand enough to slide off and on the throttle with a jerky injection response as the result. When really going for it I started exploring the double 300mm front discs with 2-pot Brembo’s. For full effect they need to be applied with some force. Turn on the ABS and there is one element less to think of and depending on your skills they can make you go faster by allowing some more confident deceleration. The 990 Adventure weighs in at a couple of kilos more than the 990 Adventure S Dakar due to the ABS system. However, they both weigh more than 200 kg fully tanked up so ABS is not such a bad idea. I actually preferred to keep the ABS on most of the time. Change your riding style a bit and have fun with ABS off-road too. The Bosch/Brembo system is not linked so there is still some rider input. Funnily enough, suddenly the gravelled roads could be handled in the same way as the hard tarmac - hard on the gas out of the bends and brake at the last possible moment into the turns. If you are old fashioned you can just stop, push the ABS button until it starts blinking and ABS is deactivated - go slide it into the turns. Both 990 Adventure’s come as standard with Pirelli Scorpion tyres. For such a big bike I was surprised how well it tackled the off-road riding. Particularly with the road biased tyres in mind. The foot pegs features rubber damping for comfortable riding with road boots. I rode with my offroad boots and virtually no vibration came through. Both 990’s are very comfortable standing up riding off-road and it is evident KTM develops bikes between Paris-Dakar.
