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.
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.