2020 KTM 890 Duke R Review (The Naked Super Scalpel)

Some manufacturers make bikes that look pretty. Some manufacturers make bikes that look purposeful. Some manufacturers make bikes that look really angry. KTM is that manufacturer. This is their new 890 Duke R and it just looks so angry. If it was in a pub you'd definitely go and have your beer somewhere else. The Duke has an 890cc parallel twin engine, makes 121hp and they're claiming a dry weight of 166kg. I think we can safely assume about 180kg fully wet. So that is a punchy, lightweight bike in a really, really compact chassis. I always think you can tell quite a lot about a bike and a lot about what the manufacturer intends the bike to be used for by the tyres they come on. These Dukes come on, they might as well be racing slicks, mightn't they? That's a Michelin Power Cup 2. We were on track a couple of weeks ago on a GSXR 1000 on them. That is a really, really aggressive sports tyre. It's a track day tyre. It's a slick with a token few tread cuts in it to get through the homologation laws for road use. That kind of points at where KTM see this bike. It's a bike for being a hooligan and that's very KTM of them. Throughout this bike it has got super high performance and kind of sports track orientated components. It's got WP Apex forks and shocks. It's got massive, massive Brembo discs with huge monoblock calipers on it. It's got lightweight wheels. It's got a quick shifter that's optional but this one's got it on. You can even change the gear linkage round to make it run a race shift pattern to a reverse shift pattern for track use. Everywhere you look it's like it's a race bike but they fitted the wrong bodywork and the wrong handlebars. Potentially it could be an incredibly fun road bike or is it just going to be a hard, harsh, crashy mess and actually unpleasant to ride on the road? I'm bored of talking about it. I've been dying to ride this bike all year so let's get out, stick it on the mountain pass, wind the throttle over and see what she does. I think that KTM 890 Duke R is my favourite road bike of the moment. This moment right now. Obviously this moment right now is because I've just got off it and I'm really happy but I think that is the best road sports bike I've ridden in my life which is a big exaggeration but no it's not. I think it's true. It is a fantastic road bike. Where I'm confused is KTM's called this the scalpel, something daft like that. They've told us it's brilliant on track. It has track mode. It's got track tyres. I'm sure but it's an awesome road bike. I feel it's almost doing an injustice to go on about how good it is on track because that thing is probably the ultimate road sports bike. I couldn't think of any bike I'd have rather ridden on those mountain passes today than this KTM 890 Duke R. That's high praise. I didn't want to like it as much as I do but I really do. What makes a great road sports bike and why have I come to this rather superlative filled conclusion? Well to be honest the tank range isn't amazing. The wind protection's garbage. The mirrors are lovely. Mirrors are good. Is the seat comfy on a motorway? Don't know. Didn't try it. It was comfy enough for a few hours of flatting around mountain roads. Luggage capacity? Terrible. Pillion seat? Pillion foot pegs? Nope. None of them on this one. Yeah it's not a very practical bike but for going for a ride and making every corner really fun it's awesome. It's brilliant. A couple of things have made it work particularly well. One, awesome brakes. As anyone who rides fast on the road knows, sometimes you have to stop. Sometimes things come the other way that you didn't expect and knowing that with genuinely one finger on the front brake all day I could stop the bike in a heartbeat, stand it on the front wheel in no time at all, that lets you kind of push a little bit faster when you're trying to ride to as far as you can see and having the confidence that any time you can whack on that front brake and the thing will stop on a dime that makes riding fast on the road fun. I think the trick they've pulled as well is loads of people have got those big Brembo discs and monoblock calipers on their bikes. This thing's really light. It's 166 kilos dry which whatever that is where it's still a very light sports bike and then you've got cornering abs, you've got super moto mode abs which lets you slide the rear tyre but keeps abs on the front so you've got a really perfect storm for stopping in a very short space of time and the reason you need to stop is you'll probably be going a bit too fast. Almost certainly. Even in KTM's literature it says it has an LED headlight so when you appear from nowhere people can see you. I think they expect hooligans to buy this thing. Yeah that motor. Parallel Twins are a very fashionable engine right now. In the last few years every manufacturer I think has bought out a Parallel Twin and barged a catty. This one's got a really good blend of kind of torque and power in the lower rev range where you're using it on you know every time you're riding every road every corner you can be in high gear just rolling on and it pulls nice shove out the corner and then you can hang on to the revs and it screams it doesn't doesn't get peaky at the top but it keeps building and building and making more and more power in a way that's I'm going to describe as Goldilocks. It's fast enough that you get a buzz from it and you make good progress but it's not so ballistically fast that you're then going oh my god I'm gonna die or go to jail or both. It's kind of a sweet spot. 121 horsepower I think is a pretty good amount of power for a road bike and this bike kind of delivers it pretty damper. We've got go we've got stop those are the two most important bits the stuff in between chassis that is where this bike surprised me the most. Given historically KTM's ability to build mental slightly focused slightly too edgy motorcycles if we think back to the original KTM Superdukes and the Superduke Rs they were awesome bikes but they were harsh hard uncompromising uncomfortable at times downright bonkers things given that history and given they call this the scalpel and have been battering on about how good it is on track I really expected this thing to be a rigid board of a bike I expected it to be clattering over the bumps skipping around in the middle of the corner I expected it to be pretty uncompromising for anything but smooth roads and 100% commitment. I honestly couldn't have been more wrong. I quite like being wrong sometimes because it means we get a much better bike than negative Chris expected. It's got the WP Apex forks and shock but what's interesting is they've got 140 mil travel front 150 mil rear which is maybe 10 to 20 mil more than you'd expect on your typical sports bike and then that translates well into the ride on the road because on fast flowy roads and those mountain switchbacks where you're changing direction quickly chucking the bike around all over the place if a bike's too soft if a bike's too compliant all this wallowing and wobbling and you can't get it to settle and you have to kind of wait for the bike before you can stick it into a corner it didn't do that it just changed direction as soon as you flicked it onto its side it stayed there and it was very well behaved in that sort of fast aggressive riding and then at the other end of the spectrum when you're riding really bumpy corners some of those mountain turns are quite bad tarmac and the corners are real bumpy in the middle of the corner corner corner corner how many times can I say corner and then I rode some roads that were like deliberately bad so potholes lumps gravel stones everything and normally a bike that behaves in the high speed stuff by having stiff suspension then when you put it on that yeah low speed mucky horrible gnarly rough stuff it'd be chattering and bouncing all over the place and this didn't do that either it behaved really well in both situations which I think is a pretty impressive feat and there's no clever electronic suspension trickery it's just good quality suspension set up really well and with a little more travel to cope with those rough roads not rocket science clever and I'm going to say pure in a way there's no electrical gimmickry disguising anything it just is a well-sorted well set up chassis that lets you get the most out of the brakes the tires and suspension and the engine and uh yeah on that note I don't think I'm gonna give it back I think I'm gonna keep it and not tell KTM where I've moved to because I'm quite taken by this thing there is of course a bunch of electronical trickery on this bike there is a tft dash there is a quick shifter I mentioned the abs traction control right by wire throttle blah blah blah blah blah loads of clever bits tft dash actually gave me all the information I needed and it was easy to scroll through the different rider modes why would you want to do that it is quite different across the modes this one's got the optional track mode on it if you put it in rain or street mode it's a bit of a pussycat super soft on the throttle that made sticking at 30 mile an hour for three miles of boring village riding that made that super easy then switching it to the track mode and the more aggressive throttle response sticking at 30 mile an hour didn't really happen it just went and wants to take off all the time which was awesome fun on the open road but pain in the backside of the village switching between them was a good idea and actually pretty easy on this control in this dash in track mode you can then turn things like wheelie control in case you need to maybe do a wheelie you always need to do a wheelie on this bike you can also turn the abs into supermoto mode which lets you slide the rear tire so there's a few little nuances in those settings that you'll find your own way with but yeah it's nice that you can get to them change them and they're easy to adjust the quick shifter up and down quick shifter that did my favorite thing when you full gas in track mode shifting up hard it goes i probably did four times more gear shifts than i needed to just because the noise made me smile so much i did have a couple of times when my foot was touching the lever and it just made made the engine cut out i don't know if that's a particularly this bike or my foot position or what but a couple of little incidences of that but nothing that really spoiled my ride there must be something bad about it there has to be something bad about the orange wheels get dirty really easy that's that's a bad thing that's terrible you know you'd oh you'd have to keep cleaning them um i used all of the fuel and now i've got to fill it up again maybe that's a bad thing i don't know yeah i'm struggling i'm i'm racking my brains to think of something i don't like about this bike i like naked sports bikes i like bikes that are fun to ride on the road and it has those boxes ticked really really well i ride loads and loads of different motorbikes that's that's not meant to be a brag i'm quite lucky but yeah it's not meant to be a brag but it's to qualify what i'm about to say i jump from bike to bike to bike i keep bikes for a week at a time two weeks at a time then jump to the next one i've got a few of my own bikes as well so i'm always on and off i never really ride the same bike for more than two or three days running and doing that you notice a lot of very subtle things about bikes and you notice which bikes are fundamentally easy to ride and confidence inspiring from the minute you get on them certain bikes do this really really well everyone knows it but that great big german weird engine adventure bike the gs gs that is a good example of that is a bike that love it or hate it it's really easy to get on and ride and ride fast it gives you confidence the original i'm gonna say the original the 2012 2013 era duke 690 the single cylinder one exactly the same thing it was a bike that the minute you sat on it it was light it was compact it was nimble but it never felt intimidating it was really easy to get on and ride street triple another good example the original triumph street triple a bike that you just jumped on and immediately you felt like you've been riding it for 20 years already that doesn't happen very often with a sports orientated bike by their nature they're aggressive they're fast they're a bit tall they're stiff a bike like this that's pitched as an edgy hard sports track bike i jumped on it this morning having never ridden it before cold damp greasy road and it just felt like i've been riding it for every day for the last three months it was so easy to get on with nothing was snappy nothing was pushing me out of my comfort zone straight away when i wanted to go fast it went fast and when i wanted to bimble along and avoid the wet leaves it did that it steered where i expected it braked when i expected it went on the gas when i expected which sounds like stuff you should take for granted on a bike but believe me when you ride everything some stuff is at this end of the scale where it's really really hard work and some stuff is at this end of the scale where it's natural and effortless and that i think is probably why i'm waxing lyrical so much about this bike all the spec stuff all the fancy bits all the brembo brakes and the bright orange wheels all that stuff is great but it's no use if you can't use it and you don't feel confident and comfortable using it and that's the trick this bike pulls how or why or what numbers make that happen i have no idea i'm not sure any of the engineers at these places do either i think it's one of those things that sometimes the bike comes together and it's just right and that 890 is just right they have done a blinding job of making an easy to ride bike they can go as mad as you want to or as calm as you want to and at 10 10 399 just under 10 and a half grand it's a hell of a hell of a lot of fun for your money and if your thing is riding fast twisty roads classic sports bike stuff and the odd track day go and have a go on one of these tell us what you think because i'm hard pushed to find something i don't like about it