BIKETEST KTM 990 SUPER DUKE R:GOOD MORNING, students, and welcome to Dr Hill's School of Motorcycle Psychiatry.
The sign on my laboratory door says: “You never see a motorcycle outside a psychiatrist’s – unless it belongs to the psychiatrist”, so we are not here today to discuss the psychological problems of motorcyclists, such as an addiction to black leather, a belief they are reincarnated knights in shining armour, or assorted hero delusions.
No, this morning we are dealing with a rather unusual patient: a schizophrenic motorcycle. Now as you also know, schizophrenia, from the Greek roots skhizein("to split") and phren or phren("mind") is a mental state characterised by delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, formal thought disorder, grossly disorganised, inappropriate or catatonic behavior, and a lack or decline in emotional response, speech or motivation.
It is often confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or split personality, a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities known as alter egos.
However, here is the most interesting thing about this particular motorcycle: it displays symptoms of both these conditions.
Let us look at the slide of the patient. You may well gasp at the blatantly aggressive appearance, with the sharp edges guaranteed to impale passing grandmothers who accidentally stumble and fall against them.
Not to mention the shameless flaunting of the frame in a fashion completely inappropriate to any civilised society, a shamelessness exacerbated even more by the brash orange colour scheme.
You might like to note that the frame weighs a mere 9kg in an obvious attempt to encourage the motorcycle to be ridden at lunatic speeds.
If you needed any further proof, KTM took the V-twin engine from the 950 Adventure, bored it out to 999cc and fuel-injected it to create the engine for the standard Super Duke, which created 118bhp at 9,000rpm and 100Nm at 7,000rpm.
As if that wasn’t enough, for this R model they’ve boosted that to 130bhp at 10,000rpm and 102Nm at 8,000rpm on a bike which weighs 186kg.
Even more insanely, the 67.3 degree rake and 93.9mm trail, compared to the base model’s 66.1 degree rake and 103mm trail, is simply inviting otherwise normal bikers to tackle corners with irretrievable mania.
I have found the only way to deal with patients like these is to tackle the matter head on, so I went riding on this machine. I started the engine, and it sounded like a bag of very expensive spanners in a washing machine. I climbed aboard, and it felt exactly the same.
I rode off, and as in all KTM patients I have handled, at anything below 4,000rpm, the throttle was an on-off switch to the extent that my progress through the gates of the university brought the porter running from his lodge to see what manner of epileptic kangaroo was passing.
The motorcycle was, in short, showing all the symptoms of disorganised speech, inappropriate or catatonic behavior, and a lack of emotional response.
On the open road, in spite of my despair of finding a cure for this particular specimen, I opened the throttle all the way from 5,000rpm to the redline at 10,200rpm.
Well, class, it was as if I was riding a different motorcycle, as my head snapped back and I found myself hurtling towards the horizon like the Starship Enterprise, accompanied by the music of the spheres from an engine which was determined to let the world know that in that moment it had found its voice and its reason for being.
As I suspected, the handling was so sharp I found myself rounding corners in an insane yet disturbingly satisfying fashion. You might feel, given what I have said about both the appearance, the design, the development and the utterly different personality of this motorcycle at low and high revs, I am entitled to rest my case that it is both schizophrenic and irretrievably dissociative.
However, it is the mark of any great psychiatrist that they never jump to conclusions or rest on their laurels, and since I see through the lecture theatre windows that the sun is shining, I feel duty bound to go out and do a lot more research.
Class is dismissed.
Factfile KTM 990 Super Duke R
Engine:999cc four-stroke liquid-cooled fuel-injected V-twin, four valves, DOHC
Power:97kW @10,000 rpm
Torque:102 Nm at 8,000rpm
Suspension:front – WP USD 48mm, travel 135mm; rear – WP monoshock, travel 150mm
Brakes:front – two Brembo four-piston fixed calipers x 320mm; rear – Brembo single-piston floating caliper, brake disc 240mm
Tyres:front 120/70 ZR 17in, rear 180/55 ZR 17in
Steering head angle:67.3°
Trail:93.9mm
Wheelbase:1,450mm
Ground clearance:140mm
Seat height:865 mm
Fuel capacity:18.5 litres Dry weight: 186kg
Price:£10,995 in Northern Ireland (there's no current KTM dealer in the Republic. Test bike supplied by Philip McCallen, philipmccallen.com)