Every year, KTM offers a handful of lucky racers the chance to own a rally raid race bike that is as close to the factory-spec as possible. For the 2022 racing season, this offer is no different.
The 2022 KTM 450 Rally Factory Replica has been built with the direct inputs from Dakar Rally racers Toby Price, Matthias Walkner and Sam Sunderland.
The gold standard of Dakar Rally bikes, the KTM 450 Rally earned its reputation from 18 years of total dominance at the iconic rally-raid.
While the factory ride with KTM is perhaps the most coveted in the bivouac, the Austrian brand makes its machinery available for privateers as well, where it is also the weapon of choice.
The 2017 Dakar Rally starts today, and over the next 13 days we will be bringing you all the news of this grueling race for cars, trucks, quads, and of course motorcycles.
Toby Price is favored to win in 2017, the Australian once again on a KTM 450 Rally. He won’t have an easy time of it though, with riders from Honda, Husqvarna, Yamaha, and even within his own KTM Racing team all having a shot at this year’s addition.
To hoist the winner’s trophy though, riders will be tested over 12 stages, seven of which have timed sections of 400km or more. As fans should be well aware of, anything can happen over those 12 stages.
For 2017, the Dakar Rally will start in Paraguay for the first time ever (the race’s 29th host country), before it heads to Bolivia, and then ends in Argentina.
Six days will be spent above 3,000 meters in elevation, and Dakar Sporting Director Marc Coma says it will be the most grueling Dakar Rally ever – as a five-time winner himself, Coma’s words should be taken with a heavy burden.
To get you in the mood for the 38th running of the Dakar Rally (the 9th in South America), we bring you a bevy of photos of the bike that everyone wants to beat: the 2017 KTM 450 Rally.
KTM has won the last 13 runnings of The Dakar, and to get that thirteenth win for 2014, the Austrians went back to the drawing board, designing and building an all-new 450cc rally racer.
With the previous KTM 450 Rally being essentially the 690cc machine, with a 450cc motor wedged into it, the 2014 KTM 450 Rally race bike was able to make great strides over its venerable, though compromised, predecessor.
The proof in the pudding was Marc Coma claiming his fourth Dakar win, and soldifying KTM’s position against an increasingly more competitive field, which sees both Honda and Yamaha elevating their game.
With the factory team signing off on the design, the Austrians are is now making the KTM 450 Rally available to privateers, with the KTM 450 Rally Production Racer now available for purchase.
The 2014 Dakar Rally is finally done, after two weeks of hard racing across Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Despite a slow start to this year’s Dakar, KTM’s Marc Coma took his fourth career win of the iconic rally raid race, aboard KTM’s all new KTM 450 Rally race bike.
Finishing almost two hours clear of his nearest competitor, teammate Jordi Viladoms, Coma took the lead on Stage Five and never looked back. The Spaniard’s fourth Dakar win came primarily from consistent riding, which saw Coma slowly rise in the rankings as Despres and Barreda made mistakes and encountered technical difficulties with their machinery.
“Without the right people behind me it would have been impossible to win,” said Coma. “We have worked very well throughout the race and also before. Last year I went through a very difficult situation not being able to compete because of injury and I came back to win the race. I think this says a lot about the people I have around me. I am very proud of this victory. What was key to winning the Dakar was not to make any mistakes.”
Marc Coma dedicated his win to his late teammate Kurt Caselli, who tragically died during the 2013 SCORE Baja 1000. Caselli filled in for Coma in the 2013 rally, earning himself great praise for his assention in the ranks, and two stage wins. Coma’s victory is a fitting tribute to the American rider.
How rude of us. All this talk about KTM’s new 450cc race bike for the Dakar Rally, and we haven’t properly introduced the machine to you. Well, we did bring you some of the first photos of the 2014 KTM 450 Rally race bike a few months ago, but they hardly do the purpose-built race bike any justice.
KTM’s goal with the 450 Rally was to build a lighter, slimmer, and better handling machine than the previous machine, which was basically a 600cc-class chassis with a 450cc motor wedged into it. Now building a new bike around a brand new motor, all from the ground-up, KTM believes it has the ultimate adventure-racer in its arsenal.
More like a motocross bike in its design than the bulky 2013 model was, the 2014 KTM 450 Rally is a stunning piece of kit, and for as odd as it sounds, we have never lusted after a fairing stay / headlight housing more in our lives. Luckily KTM supplied us with 13 hi-res photos of the new KTM 450 Rally…totally naked. If you’re a gearhead, the following might not be safe for work.
These are the first photos of the 2014 KTM 450 Rally factory race bike that Marc Coma, Kurt Caselli, and Ruben Faria will ride in the upcoming Dakar Rally in three-months time (factory rider Francisco Lopez will be on the 2013 machine). The 2014 race bike is a completely new machine from the ground up, and will make its racing debut at the OilLibya Rally of Morocco.
With the goal of winning its 13th Dakar in a row, KTM has some stiff competition for this upcoming Dakar, as former-rider Cyril Despres has defected to the Yamaha Racing team, and HRC has recently debuted its brand new 2014 Honda CRF450 Rally race bike as well.
Carrying the #1 plate this year, Cyril Despres is one of the winningest motorcycle racers in the Dakar Rally’s history, having won the rally four times now (fellow Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel is the outright winningest motorcycle racer at Dakar, with six career wins).
Looking for his fifth win in 2013, the KTM rider has stiff competition, namely in the form of his teammate Marc Coma, who has won Dakar three times in his career. Separated by only seconds after thousands of miles of racing, the 2013 Dakar Rally is expected to be just as close between the two factory KTM riders.
With only a few more weeks until the green flag drops in Peru, we have already seen the official unveiling of the 2012 KTM Rally team, and now title sponsor Red Bull is doing its pre-game promotions as well, with a short video that features the Frenchman Despres. Visually stunning, here is a good five-minute distraction from your cubicle drone routine.
Yesterday we brought you photos of Marc Coma jumping the KTM 450 Rally race bike with some help from freestyle star Ronnie Renner. As you can see in those photos, Renner had a camera on-board his KTM, and today we can bring you the video that ensued from their hooliganery (we’re pretty sure that’s a word). We don’t normally cover the off-road side of the motorcycle industry, but considering we were just in the UAE, and that this video makes jumping sand dunes in the desert even cooler than we previously though, well…how could we resist? Check it out after the jump.
KTM rally racer Marc Coma took to the air after winning his fifth Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. In the deserts of the UAE, Coma tried his hand at launching the 140kg 2011 KTM 450 Rally bike over the sand dunes with help from X-Games gold medal winner Ronnie Renner.
The two riders had some fun swapping between Coma’s rally bike and Renner’s freestyle motocrosser — a weird experience for both, with Coma making a 15 meter long, 6 meter high, jump on the usually terrestrially grounded rally bike. Photos after the jump.