Introduction: -
What’s up Motordrifters, we trust you all are doing well. It’s been a long time since we discussed a 2-wheeler, so we thought of creating a Post on a Motorcycle, that gave birth to a new kind of enthusiasm among the petrolheads and the Motorheads, whatever you like to describe yourself as.
That motorcycle is the Duke 790, yes, the same motorcycle that looks like a freaking knife moving on the road, probably the sharpest looking Motorcycle in the Segment, but is it even worth the Price?? Well, today are going to know whether it’s worth the price or not, considering the engine, the Technology, the Design, the Rider's comfort and of course its rivals like the Kawasaki Z900 and the Suzuki GSX 750.
Picture this, you are the owner of a Duke 390, one day you are still in the city on your duke, then you stop at a Red-light, seconds later a Duke pulls up next to you, intrigued you give it a quick look, yeah it’s the same bike like yours, a Duke 390. The light turns Green, you rev and then you charge, but to your Surprise, the Bike next to you left you in Dust behind, you start wondering what happened, then you take a close look and see that it was a Duke 790 that just left you Behind.
The Point of this Story?? The Design
Design: -
The design similarities between the Duke 390 and the Duke 790 are so much that even if you are into bikes, you won’t be able to differentiate between the 790 and the 390 unless you are deep into KTM’s. The Design is Sharp just as the 390, that Street Fighter Position and Stance is Still there. The Headlight unit is pretty much the same. The Instrument Cluster is almost the same as well until you start toggling between the Features.
The Differentiating points are the 790 Badging and stickers mainly. But you can also notice the presence of a larger exhaust outlet on the 790, another differentiating factor would be the Wider rear tires, but that’s going to be pretty much all.
Engine & Performance: -
The Duke 790 or the Scalpel as the Popular name goes by, is a Motorcycle that Punches a lot of Performance at its heart, how much??
Well, its parallel-twin engine produces 105 Bhp and 86 Nm of torque, swap these numbers and you can get yourself a Hatchback or a sedan with almost the same numbers but at a lower price.
But what do these Numbers result in?? Well, the acceleration from 0 to 60 Mph as per the company is 3.11 seconds, that’s even faster than the AMG GT Black series, but in the real world tests with the help of a VBOX, the duke 790 did an acceleration run of 0 to 60 Mph in 3.8 seconds, which is still very impressive for a Bike that costs the price of a normal Hatchback or a sedan.
The reason why the Duke 790 accelerates so fast is because of the availability of torque in the lower RPMs, 67 Nm of torque out of the almost 87 nm the 790 has is available well below 4,000 RPM and this results in the engine delivering quite a huge momentum to the motorcycle.
Since Bragging rights are also being taken into consideration, Top speed has to be Impressive and it happens to be just that, on the speedometer, the 790 will do a top speed of 231 Kmph, but considering the real-world timings, the Duke 790 will do 220 Kmph which isn’t bad in any terms and is more than enough in real life where most probably it will be doing 150-160 Kmph.
Conclusion: -
All of this seems good, the Design, the engine, and Performance, exhaust note, everything, but only when you come to the cost of the Duke 790, is when you start to see how much the Duke 790 is overpriced.
The Duke 790 when it was launched costed about 8.64 Lakhs ex-showroom, the on-road price was 9.28 lakhs in Delhi, that’s very expensive considering that the Competition offers more power, performance, comfort at a price much less than that.
So this was pretty obvious that the Scalpel had to be discontinued, KTM is soon going to relaunch the bike and this time the price is going to be a little bit more reasonable and that’s a great thing, but KTM did suffer some loss because of overpricing the 790, they learned it the Hard away, we trust they are not going to repeat the same mistake in future.
So that will be all for this time, we trust you liked this one, if you did, then do share it with your friends and do consider subscribing to Motordrift for more such content in the future.
Till then
Ciao
