RACE ME UP

Trying too hard to go fast? Stop right now and get the new KTM RC 390

- Kartik Ware

It is a bit of a Möbius-strip situation to consider that the first RC 390 came before KTM ever made it to MotoGP. In any case, the Austrians are well within their rights to reclaim their solitary production-faired motorcycle to fall in line with what Brad Binder does on most Sundays of the year. An all too familiar single-cylinder vibe greeted me when I pushed the starter button. Perhaps a bit too familiar, because as much as I appreciated what it has done for me and thousands of others, I didn't get why it still reminded me of 2012 when I first met it. I mean, it was never an earful of Beethoven, was it?

KTM has made that potent motor for over ten years now, and I live with it every day in my 390 Adventure, but I've always thought it lacked the finesse that comes innately with, for example, Japanese bikes. Then again, our bunch of KTMs are made by Bajaj a couple of hours from my home, and not in Austria. Nonetheless, when a rider launches an attack on a corner, the only characteristic of the engine that matters is how fast it can get them into and out of it. And in that crucial in-between space, where things are made and unmade, the new RC 390 makes all the difference over its predecessor.

Since I was riding damaged (you can read about it in another story), it was quite nonchalant of me to expect braking into a 165-kph corner to be easy. And yet, that's more or less what it was, where the older RC 390 would've made it way more difficult. The new one, though, is a far more sorted motorcycle and it easily lets the rider extricate themselves from the trouble that they got into, as I understood over and over again. And it was all thanks to a series of changes, some very obvious and others not so much.