If the Husqvarna Norden 901 was one of your top picks from the 2019 EICMA show, then we have some good news for you, as the adventure-touring bike has been given the green light for production by the Swedish brand.
The news shouldn’t come as a surprise to astute ADV fans, as spy shots of the new Husky have already been spotted in the wild, and Husqvarna has a strong track record of bringing its EICMA concepts to reality.
What will be interesting though is where Husqvarna lands on the feature list, and more importantly, how the Husqvarna Norden 901 is going to be priced against its competition.
What we do know on the technical side is what we can see, namely that the dual-sport uses the 890cc parallel-twin engine, which just debuted a few weeks ago on the KTM 890 Duke R.
We also know that the Husqvarna Norden 901 employs a 21″ front wheel, with an 18″ wheel on the rear.
If the bike planners in Austria are smart, they will pack the Norden 901 with all the bells and whistles on the electronics and components side of things, carrying over from the KTM 790 Adventure R offering and expanding upon it.
This is because Husqvarna has a habit of over-charging for its street bike offerings, hoping to take the premium side of the equation on the market, though often without offering anything discernibly better than what is available on the parent company’s own orange bikes.
This has led to struggling sales for bikes like the Svartpilen 701 and Vitpilen 701, and could very well continue with the Norden 901 if the brand and its KTM overlords don’t learn from their past mistakes on this end of the new bike process.
While Husqvarna isn’t talking timetables for the Norden 901’s release, we would expect an EICMA or INTERMOT release next year, with the bike being a 2021 model year machine.
Until then, we can likely expect a lengthy teasing campaign, as Husqvarna trickles out the details we so very much want to hear (horsepower, wet weight, is it faster than an unladen swallow, etc).
What we at A&R really want to see though is how the brand as a whole is going to differentiate its first ADV bike from the orange ones across the road. The 890 motor is certainly a good start. As we are fond of say, time will tell.
Source: Husqvarna
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