Spy photos of the KTM 1290 Super Duke are nothing new, and the Austrian company has even gone as far as to tease us with a heavily massaged KTM 1290 Super Duke R prototype at the 2012 EICMA show. With the final version of the superbike-powered streetfighter expected to be decidedly less edgy, the photo brought to us today (one can only guess when it was taken), if anything else, is a reminder to be reluctant our expectations.
The ever elusive “spy” photo, what we have here looks to be a near production prototype of the KTM 1290 Super Duke that has been caught in the wild. Easily the clearest photo we have seen of the road-going bike, it clearly holds KTM’s LC8 motor as well as the same trellis frame found on the “beast” prototype.
Free of its paint and Kiska-designed graphics, the KTM is without some of our most favorite design elements that we saw on the prototype in Milan — most notably the hybrid underslung / GP-style Akrapovic exhaust (maybe the Slovenians will help us out here).
We imagine that when the Austrians finish gussying her up, we will be more excited about the new Super Duke, and we admit that we would like to see KTM take a longer journey down the edgy route they explored with their EICMA bike.
A solomen reminder about over-hyping a machine before its official launch, if you fail to deliver something that meets or exceeds the expectations you create, you end up with quite the disaster on your hands. Hopefully that’s not the case with here with the KTM 1290 Super Duke.
Source: Bothan Spies
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