TRACK-ONLY and ‘limited edition’ were the two words from the recent KTM RC 8C launch that understandably made a large number of motorcycle fans a little bit glum.
And that’s because a road-going sports bike based on the chassis and engine platform that KTM has produced looked to make a belting sports bike for the road.
Well. KTM seem to have heard all of our moans and groans, as the news today is that the Austrian manufacturer is working on a fully road-legal version of the RC 8C.
The news stems from images captured by eagle-eyed snappers and shared on the German website Motorrad. The images we can’t show – and we are pretty sure you can find them if you try – but what we can say is that it all looks very good, and fairly well advanced.
What KTM haven’t done is just bolt some fairings to the 890 Duke. Instead, it looks like the engineers have gone to work on the chassis and frame. The swingarm is the same as the Duke item as is much of the frame, although beefier frame tubes and a stronger looking strut linkage have been employed. The RC 8C track bike had a bespoke frame, much closer to those found in Moto2 and Moto3, that would simply have been too expensive to put into production.
The radiator system has been enlarged, with a more sensibly sized item now residing behind the matt black fairing of the machine.
From an aesthetic point of view, it’s hard to tell how it will turn out. The black on black paint doesn’t help it to stand out, although the fairing side panels look to be very close to those found on the RC 8C. One element we hope gets changed is the headlight. It looks as though KTM has taken the LTD units from the previous generation RC125 and RC390 and wedged them in the centrally mounted air scoop – let’s hope some more thought is put into the design of those!
With KTM not exhibiting at EICMA, it’s hard to tell if this bike will be further revealed over the course of the event – online at least.
If anything pops up, we’ll be sure to let you know.
