I know I'm in the minority but I really like KTM's, I had a 990 and 1290 super duke, nothing went wrong with them, a full titanium Akra system didn't cost as much as a whole bike (and was a full system!) and great fun. It's such a shame what's happened to them, £16k for a brand new 1390 SDR is a bargain, but the risk of losing so much money is too high. You'd have to be brave (or stupid) to buy a new one at the moment, and there are so few dealers left, soon be none.
I loved my 890R, arguably one of the best bikes for Uk twisty roads fun. I only got rid of it because of the camshaft issue even though mine was fine. If anyone gets a chance of one cheap I would reccommend it.
This is why the smaller bikes are booming at the expense of the larger ones. Less outlay and risk and, if you choose your roads carefully, probably more fun.
Really depends on the individuals pocket/ income and what the bike they are looking at... I'd guess that for many people buying a bike for under £4500 is not hugely expensive. Would under £3000 be fairly cheap? Under £2000 is cheap for sure in my book! This is assuming you get at least two summers fun out of it and probably a grand on ebay afterwards.
The thing with KTM, certainly for me, is that since about 2014 the bikes have been getting better and better, and seem to even be built better. So that’s not an issue for me, I can’t believe they have any more issues than a Aprilia for example. my issue though has been the pricing strategy, they have always done stupid discounting on their bikes, as long as I can remember, close to Christmas you can bet multiple thousands off bikes, which is okay if you want a bike at that point, but trashes all the used values, so it was going to catch them out. I’ve used this example before but I worked for J&S accessories back in 2003, and we obv sold thousands of helmets, most on deals, but we were never allowed to advertise discounts on arai and if we did it was only allowed to be like a £50 store voucher or we took more of other stuff customers were buying, because the logic from the distributor was that if people see Arai’s discounted all the time they will think they can’t be worth the RRP. that logic worked, you’ve never been able to get silly money of Hondas and look at their used prices…. Anyway, sorry for the long rant
Interesting points. But using your example, was it always this way with Hondas? Back in the day -were there never deals available? I don't remember Honda Dream bikes being exempt from sales bargaining, and the resale prices were low. Nowadays as we all know Honda sell 50% of all bikes, but they have worked for a long time in various ways to get there. KTM are by comparison a young company, in their early days of being a worldwide manufacturer.
fair challenge, my mate worked for Reading Honda for around 5 years, circa 2009-2014 ish, there was no discounting going on then, perhaps some accessory packs thrown in, I paid full retail for my CBR600RR in 2009 also, although Honda did take a load of the burgundy fireblade they couldn’t sell and paint them yellow to make a Steve brogan superstock rep! Rather then discount the burgundy ones. I have to keep saying it because why Honda thought burgundy was a good colour for their flagship superbike I’ll never know. I do know that lots of discounting is going on now for Hondas, like fireblades mainly but I guess sign of the times
