Moto News: KTM Discounts, New Goldwing, Enfield Shotgun & Turbo Langen!

Welcome back everybody to our weekly moto news show where this week we'll take a look at some astounding new deals from KTM along with why they're offering such massive discounts. Then there's a new 50th anniversary edition of the mighty Honda Goldwing that I think's probably going to either float your boat or not. Plus a great new deal from Cardo, an idiot proof patent from Honda, a flashy new special edition of Royal Enfield's super cool shotgun 650 and then we'll casually round off with what could now become the world's fastest production motorcycle. So first up this week we got a press release from KTM announcing some pretty substantial discounts on pretty much all of their new bikes such as you know the 125 to 790 dukes with discounts ranging from 800 quid up to 1200 quid. Then you've got the 1390 super duke R and Evo both of which get a whopping £2,700 off and then from the sports touring lineup where you can save £2,100 on an 890 SMT and £3,100 on last year's 1290 super duke GT. Then if you take a look at the adventure lineup from the previous year model 390 up to the big capacity stuff like the 1290 super adventure R you've got discounts ranging from 1,300 to 2,600 and on top of that pretty much all of their dirt bike lineup now comes with between £1,000 and £2,000 off. Perhaps most interestingly though was that they've announced what they call a price realignment which i think is like KTM speak for we overpriced it in the first place on the 990 duke which was you know in my opinion way too expensive when they brought it out last year at £12,999. It was just such a big step up on the So yeah this looks pretty good to me actually the new price of £10,999 seems much more appropriate and also makes it look really quite good versus some of the competition. Soon after similar news came from Husqvarna owned by the same group as KTM of course with the Svartpilen and Vitpilen prices slashed between £900 and £1,500. Nordens where you can get either £1,600 or £1,700 off those and there are again similar savings to the KTM lineup for their Enduro and motocross bikes. On top of that they announced the price for their new 2025 Vitpilen 801 and this one's going to be available for £9,999 which i think is you know probably less than most people were anticipating. So look on the face of it it probably looks like a pretty great time to But thing is unless you've been living under a rock for the past year or two you'll probably know that they've been going through some pretty serious financial difficulties recently which have kind of forced their hand to introduce all these significant and widespread price reductions. Now I won't go into the full details right now because it's probably you know there's enough there for an entire separate video although maybe let me know in the comments if you want to see a timeline of the sort of difficulties that KTM are going through but in the meantime what I would say is this there's a hearing in just over a couple of weeks at the end of February in which they're going to have to have all of their restructuring and financial plans signed off by their many creditors and that assuming it gets signed off would allow them to move forward as a business and avoid being declared bankrupt effectively albeit with some Thing is though I checked in on these discounts and I believe you know from speaking to their press team that there's no hard date on when they're going to finish but it seems like they're going to be around for a little while and so maybe it's still worth holding on for a couple of weeks to make sure you don't end up spending what is still you know a lot of money on a bike only for KTM to go under and not be able to get parts or software updates or servicing or repairs personally though I really hope KTM managed to find a way forward I hope it does get signed off in some form and then yes potentially it does look like it could be a good time to grab yourself an absolute bargain if you've been eyeing up one of these KTMs anyway and plus hopefully it'll help KTM to get through this backlog of bikes that they've amassed over the past few years which is believed to be at you know around a quarter of a million moving on though to something a little bit more joyous and we've got an announcement from Honda with the unveiling of their 50th anniversary edition for the legendary Goldwing Tourer now this is one of my favorite bikes that I've been able to borrow over the past few years with ridiculous levels of refinement and comfort and also a bit of an x-factor that just make it very hard not to love new for 2025 though we've got some special retro inspired paint jobs to celebrate this model's history as well as a few technical tweaks while they had the chance to update it they also included a really nice pack of images of all the different models through the years of different Goldwings and I did enjoy flicking through those and seeing how it's evolved you know from a flat 4 to a flat 6 to getting more and more bodywork and even some signature features being introduced like the airbag for these new 2025 bikes though while the standard bagger style Goldwing so just with the side cases well that now comes in matte ballistic black with some stealthy looking graphics pretty nice looking if a little bit subdued but it's the full luggage Goldwing Tour that gets something a bit more vibrant here in the UK the manual gearbox version gets a digital silver metallic but the ones with the DCT gearbox that effectively allows you to run it as an automatic if you're not familiar well those come in bordeaux metallic red which i think is a reference back to previous generations or this one the eternal gold and mahogany brown metallic with the almost wood effect station wagon style panels now i reckon this one is gonna be a bit of a love hate thing it's a bit marmite probably but personally i'm not sure if i buy one but i still like it and i love that honda have been really bold to mark this occasion and gone for something that's a real direct tribute to a previous Goldwing and something completely different to the paint that was already available for the current generation what do you think of it though hot or not let me know down in the comments on top of the new paint jobs though you also get some 50th anniversary badging on the center console there which i think is a nice touch you've got something similar on the keyless fob as well and then there's also the option to get a limited edition desktop scale model with the first gen on one side and the latest gen on the other side and a little mirror down the middle so it makes the bike look complete from whatever angle you're looking at it from but what about these technical changes well one of them is that the 1800 cc flat six engine which is an absolute peach has been cleaned up with new sensors for the latest euro 5 plus emissions regulations and there's also some tweaks to the infotainment system too so it's got carplayed and android auto but previously you had to plug it in with a cable whereas now you can connect over wi-fi probably not a big deal if you don't regularly use some of these features but for me even in my van to be honest it's far preferable to have wireless carplay because it just automatically connects every time you jump in or jump on the bike as the case may be here much easier to use in my experience but also the bluetooth headset connectivity system has been improved with a simpler way to connect and the built-in speakers have been upgraded with a bit more speaker pressure so they should be a little clearer at higher volumes when you're traveling at higher speeds so you can barrel down the motorway with the speakers turned up to 11 and hopefully still get nice audio clarity so some nice little tweaks across the bike if not a complete revelation and that kind of had me wondering actually do you think they've done enough to mark the 50th anniversary of such a well-known bike i think from the comments on some of our videos with new bike rumors and stuff like that that plenty of you suspected that something would be introduced to mark this occasion and so i'd love to know down in the comments below whether this was what you had in mind or were you looking for some proper performance and comfort enhancements or maybe some new features recently for example we looked at a patent that had been filed for a lidar-enabled cruise control system that was specifically shown i think on the goldwing but it looks like anything brand new like that could still be a year or two away at least i actually put these pictures up of this new bike when they first came out earlier this week and the feedback i've got to say was a little bit mixed arthur kayer said the retro paint job was a bold move by honda i like it in fact i love it and neils martin said oh i like it very 70s indeed lovelacissimo says the gold wagon yes but on the other hand you know potato man says brilliant bike but needs a serious update and a price reduction and the tonicro says i love the wing but this color combo is meh then over on instagram anonymous biker says very disappointing no upgrades of any consequence on a 50th anniversary next but yeah as always let me know what you think in the comments now scripting that with the improved bluetooth connectivity reminding me actually you know is there anything more romantic than a pair of bluetooth headsets cardo seem to agree as well with a heck of a deal for valentine's day with up to 22 off most of their headsets a full list of which i'll put on the screen now it runs from the 7th of feb to the 22nd so it straddles valentine's and so there's plenty of time to get yours in and there's a link down in the description below where you can find out more now i won't give you the hard sell on cardo but you should be aware their channel sponsors but even so we still believe they're the best headsets in the business and so if you're thinking about picking one up soon then now's probably a good time especially if you can kind of stealthily justify buying two of them as a valentine's gift but now for some new tech and i'd love it if you could tag a mate in the comments who you think might need this next feature because we probably all know at least one rider who struggles a bit with u-turns and it's a pattern from honda with some diagrams outlining what looks to be an anti-fall system in fact there's actually some accompanying text in the pattern that describes how it works and it reads as follows an aspect of the present invention is a saddle ride vehicle including a steering actuator that applies torque in a steering direction to a suspension apparatus supporting a steering wheel fuzz detection means that nah i'm not going to read that i'll summarize in fact i actually put that through chat gpt to summarize it and make it a bit more obvious as to what it actually does and from my understanding it's that it basically measures the speed of tilt in order to get an idea of how well the bike's balanced and then using an electronic actuator on the fork it can course correct automatically if it thinks you're about to go over now on the one hand it sounds maybe a bit much like it might be too intrusive but on the other you could kind of see it as the steering equivalent of like abs for braking or traction control for rear wheel grip both of which i think is fair to say are now a widely accepted part of motorcycling it might sound a little bit far-fetched that honda could actually make a bike that won't necessarily go over but then you remember this self-balancing prototype from a couple of years back and yeah i think probably robots are actually a bit better at balancing than humans now still if you're a little bit intimidated by doing a tight u-turn on a big gold wing or something like that then this might just be the ticket and so yeah let me know would you ride a bike with this feature or not now next up we've got a snazzy new version of royal enfield shotgun 650 sporty cruiser on the way courtesy of a new collaboration with motorcycle clothing brand icon motorsports just a hundred of these will be made i believe with 25 going into europe five of which will go into the uk and i've been told that that's the largest allocation of any country mechanically it's very much the same since the 650 parallel twin that makes 47 horsepower the same easygoing chassis but with a fairly neutral riding position but of course this one gets a custom racing inspired paint job gold wheels and a red saddle for what i think is a pretty fantastic look overall to be fair the standard paint on the shotgun was already quite lively and looked pretty good i thought but you can see how this one will stand out from the crowd a bit and i do like that sort of racing vibe that it's got as for the price well you know keep in mind a ducati special edition can be up around the sort of 60 000 pound mark but with this one enfield have stayed true to their fundamental values with it starting from 7 399 pounds i think that's pretty good it's just 500 quid more than the standard shotgun 650 plus you get an icon design slab town intercept royal enfield jacket thrown in which probably accounts for a good share of the price difference although i will say i'm probably not that sold on the matching jacket certainly not as nice looking as the bike but maybe nice to have hung up next to it in the garage but yeah pre-orders are or pre-registration should i say is open already with the actual exclusive drop going live on the 12th of feb i believe at 3 pm gmt so if you like the look of this thing then you probably better get yourself signed up let me know what you make of it in the comments and also whether you take 10 of these or one of the ducati street fighter lamborghini edition for the same price but look if 47 horsepower sounds a bit pedestrian for your taste then fear not because something a lot more pokey could be just around the corner small volume british manufacturer langan just unveiled these renders for what appears to be a turbocharged version of that bike's 1190cc v-twin makes a healthy 185 horsepower and yet it tips the scales at just 185 kilograms dry we saw it last year at the london motorcycle show and i've got to say it's very striking in the flesh but obviously not satisfied with that thousand horsepower per ton ratio well langan have slapped a turbo in it i mean there's probably more to it than that but you know that's the general idea and it's set to almost double peak power in an attempt to become the world's fastest production motorcycle now they're saying final specs are still tbc but their initial dyno tests have resulted in 250 horsepower peak when using a slightly more tame and manageable road mode full power though they believe will be capable of just over 300 horses which is just a phenomenal figure that you rarely ever hear of when it comes to the two-wheeled world now at the moment i believe the supercharged kawasaki h2r is the fastest production motorcycle with a liter inline-4 that makes 326 ps or 322 horsepower with the effects of ram air so clearly langan got their work cut out especially considering the h2r is also pretty light at 216 kilograms wet so fully fueled up and full of liquids now the plan for this one is to get it ready for the back end of 2025 or at least the pre-production versions and they're planning to run them at santa pod raceway here in the uk to get out there and set some records and i presume production versions will be available soonish after that no word on price though but the standard light speed without the turbo comes in at 44 400 pounds so i wouldn't expect this one to come in much less if at all less than the 50 grand of the kawasaki super cool or absolute overkill let me know what you think down in the comments and we'll be heading to this year's london motorcycle show next week so maybe we'll be able to have a chat with them about it there and do hit subscribe if you want to see the video from that show and also if you're heading down there and you see us on the friday do stop us and say hello i'll also leave last week's episode on the screen now so you can give it a click and give it a watch we looked at the new ktm 390 adventure lineup as well as some of the other best small to mid capacity adventure bikes on the market for 2025 do hit subscribe for more of the latest motorcycle news like this right here on moto bob a massive thanks for watching today as always and we'll see you in the next video