“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…”
These are not so much the lyrics to a groovy rock anthem or words plucked from a trippy children’s tale, it somewhat represents the growing range of motorcycles from the adventure bike mavens at KTM. Although the brand’s hulking 1290 platform made noticeable ripples across the riding community, we think it’s the smaller 390 Adventure rumored to be on the way that will make the big splash.
With adventure bikes growing in pounds like a chubby kid with face full of doughnuts, it’s the smaller displacement bikes that have been so few and far between. Despite vocal demand for such machines they have not been forthcoming. Noah Horak’s open letter to the motorcycle industry summarized not just his opinion, but that of a large number of riders; size does matter, but that doesn’t always mean bigger is better.
More rumors of the small 390 Adventure surfaced today when CarTrade.com reported that two 390 Adventures had been imported to India, ostensibly for the purposes of R&D, presumably a precursor to full production.
This is not the first we’ve seen or heard of the 390 Adventure. News of this bike first surfaced a couple years ago, but with little substantive details to get our hopes up. We now know this bike will come with the same 373.2cc thumper power plant used in the Duke 390 and RC390. With 42.9bhp, it should be a fine performer within it’s class, a category with effectively no other entries.
We can’t wait to jump down this particular rabbit hole.
