The Duke Challenges for the 250 Throne
India gets a third Duke. These are our thoughts after spending some time with the new machine on the track as well as on the road
WHEN KTM ENTERED THE Indian market back in 2012, the orange firm from Austria gave rise to great excitement among the Indian biking fraternity. We finally had affordable performance-oriented bikes after years of longing for faster imported machinery. Since their launch, the 200 Duke and 390 Duke have been the enthusiasts’ choice for fast, nimble street bikes, and now KTM have gone ahead and introduced a 250-cc Duke to fill the void between the two previous models.
Launched alongside the 2017 200 Duke and 390, the 250 Duke is a completely new machine to our market, and seems ideally placed for the customer who wants a little more power than what the 200 offers, while not spending the premium that the 390 demands. Better fuel economy than the 390 could also be a deciding factor in our mileage-obsessed market. To give you an idea of where the 250 Duke stands, it makes 30 PS at 9,000 rpm, which is 5 PS more than what the 200 makes at 10,000 rpm and 13.5 PS less than what the 390 makes, also at 9,000 rpm, and while the 200 Duke makes 19.2 Nm of torque at 8,000 rpm, the 250 makes 24 Nm at 7,500 rpm, which is 13 less than the 37 Nm made by the 390 at 7,000 rpm.
Standing in the pit-lane at the Bajaj test track outside Pune, most of us journos couldn’t keep our eyes off the new bike. The 250 Duke looks almost identical to the 2017 390 Duke, with both models sharing the large sculpted tank with stretched-forward tank shrouds, wider and more comfortable seats, tail section, side-mounted Euro 4 exhaust, new handlebar, and wide rearview mirrors. The sharply raked headlight adds an aggressive character to the frontal visage of the bike but misses out on the full LED treatment from the 390, while the split trellis frame is powder-coated black up front, the rear sub-frame is finished in KTM’s electric orange. The bike gets an updated version of the old instrument panel, with the inclusion of real-time fuel economy, but, unfortunately, we don’t get the 390’s TFT screen and larger 320-mm disc up front, while the lack of ABS seems like a glaring omission.
Tap the one-touch starter button and the 248.8-cc single purrs to life instantly as the broad new seat welcomes your derrière. The clutch felt light and the bike slotted easily into first as I set off on a few laps of Bajaj’s test track at Chakan.
The riding position is upright and relaxed, with enough room to move about on the seat, and getting into an aggressive crouch seemed to come naturally when I upped the pace. The foot-pegs are placed high enough to give the bike ample cornering clearance, and the first thing I noticed was how eager the bike was to turn into each corner; this may be due to the nine-mm-shorter wheelbase than the previous Dukes.
KTM seem to have got the fuelling spot-on, and the bike responded smoothly to throttle inputs across the rev range, and while the brakes seemed adequate, we would have much preferred the sharper bite of the larger disc from the 390 Duke, coupled with ABS. Like the 200, the 250 Duke also runs on MRF rubber, and although we would have liked to see the higherspec Metzelers, I was suitably impressed by the grip offered by these home-grown tyres during cornering and also hard braking.
Like all the single-cylinder KTMs before it, the 250 likes to be revved hard, but makes its maximum torque and power lower than the 200, and pulls better than the 200 at lower revs. This endows the 250 Duke with excellent acceleration and a wheelie-friendly nature. The new engine retains the 72mm bore of the 200, with the additional capacity coming from the 61.1-mm stroke; similar to the 390 Duke and 12.1 mm more than the 200. This engine is mated to a smooth-shifting six-speed gearbox via the same slipper clutch unit that does duty in the 390, hence the 250 also shares the 390’s taller primary gearing of 2.67; if this bike shared the final drive gearing of 3.0 with either the Duke 200 (42/14) or the 390 (45/15) the engine would feel strained and unable to pull to the higher reaches of its rev band. To compensate for this, KTM have given the 250 Duke a massive 46-tooth rear sprocket while retaining the 200’s 14-tooth front, shortening the final gearing to 3.29 to better match the power output of the bike.
It must be mentioned here that the 250 Duke is still geared slightly taller than the 200, and hence does not hit the limiter in the top two gears. With all the thought that has gone into the engine and drivetrain, the bike revved up quickly, allowing me to tap up swiftly through the ’box, and then go flat out on the long straight. I saw a maximum indicated speed of 144 km/h, which wasn’t too far off the 140.8 km/h true speed that we registered during the test.
Out on the road the nimble 250 Duke makes short work of city traffic. The reduced wheelbase really shines here as you flick the bike this way and then that, while navigating through the urban sprawl, although the wide handlebars do get awfully close to car mirrors on occasion. The revvy nature of the engine does encourage you to shift down to the lower gears and let loose the inner hooligan; however, take the mature approach, shift up early, and the bike runs extremely well as the engine purrs along sweetly at lower revs. The exhaust note through the new side-mounted pipe is subdued as compared to the last generation of Dukes, and this new bike has a less frenetic nature, making it much more comfortable to ride on the streets.
In my opinion, KTM have successfully slotted this machine right between the 200 Duke and the 390 Duke, and at Rs 1.96 lakh (OTR, Pune), to be about 30 grand dearer than the 200 and about 60 grand cheaper than the 390, we think they’ve got the pricing just right as well. With the 200-300-cc motorcycle segment growing at a considerable pace, this bike could be the next big seller from the Austrian brand.