one of the first ‘orange’ ktms. now orange is of course the brand’s standard color, but this really only started about the time i got this bike.
it sounded like an incremental improvement over the lc4 600 at the time, but boy this thing was a handful. the extra 70 cc (the 600 really only had 550 cc) made this bike a true monster. it happened to me on several occasions that i thought i was already going flat out, but when i twisted the throttle the bike just surged ahead like i had not really been going at all.
i could never handle the bike, not even on the rally courses, where outright speed was more important than finesse or cornering ability. but the truth of the matter is that the bike was doing all the driving and i just tried to hang on as best i could.
ktm had done an excellent job making the bike more ergonomic; the tank was more streamlined, the seat flatter, but basically the bike was still ‘old school’ with a big heavy relatively slow revving engine, nothing like the exc series that came a year or two later.
the engine might have been slow-revving, but made up for that with the sheer amount of torque it produced across the range. the bike was stretched, with a flat head angle, really not built for corners really. it was heavy – compared to modern dirt bikes at least – and all in all just required far too much energy to ride, let alone ride competitively.
anyway, i was happy to wave goodbye. but definitely one of the best bikes i have ever ridden.