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The Austrians continue to trickle out their new models for 2021, despite the fact that we are almost into February of new model year.

Regardless of that small detail, today we see the 2021 KTM 1290 Super Adventure S – a bike we have been expecting, but yet have also been excited to see.

KTM calls this their third iteration of the 1290 platform in the ADV space, and while many components on the “S” bike look familiar, we can also see that some key updates have come to this popular adventure-bike model.

There simply are not enough big-displacement supermotards in this world we live in. There is the Ducati Hypermotard 939, the Aprilia Dorsoduro 900, then there is the Husqvarna 701 Supermoto, and well…that’s about it.

Thankfully, I am not alone in feeling that this is a big travesty – a crime against motorcycling itself, even. That is where Maxwell Hazan (the man behind Hazan Motorworks) comes in, with his “HazanSMR” project.

It starts with a 942cc LC8 v-twin engine from KTM, and it ends with a ~310 lbs motorcycle that spits 110hp to the rear wheel. Go ahead, we’ll give you a moment to compose yourself before continuing onward.

Spy photos of the KTM 1290 Super Duke are nothing new, and the Austrian company has even gone as far as to tease us with a heavily massaged KTM 1290 Super Duke R prototype at the 2012 EICMA show. With the final version of the superbike-powered streetfighter expected to be decidedly less edgy, the photo brought to us today (one can only guess when it was taken), if anything else, is a reminder to be reluctant our expectations.

The ever elusive “spy” photo, what we have here looks to be a near production prototype of the KTM 1290 Super Duke that has been caught in the wild. Easily the clearest photo we have seen of the road-going bike, it clearly holds KTM’s LC8 motor as well as the same trellis frame found on the “beast” prototype.

As we said before in our EICMA coverage, the teased machine under the orange sheet was not a production model, but in fact a concept bike of the KTM 1290 Super Duke R Prototype. The first fully functional concept bike that KTM has ever shown, the KTM 1290 Superduke R Prototype makes an estimated 180hp and looks bat shit crazy, in a good way.

Based on the new KTM Super Duke, the KTM 1290 Superduke R Prototype  uses the same pavement kicking LC8 motor as the KTM 1190 RC8 R, though with an extra 100cc of skin in the game. Radical in just about every way, our favorite aspect has to be the custom Akrapovic exhaust, which is simply delicious. The boys and girls at Kiska really out did themselves on this one.