New 2024 Husqvarna 901 Vitpilen & Svartpilen Spy Shots: 8 Things You Need To Know!
so this week some fresh spy shots emerged of a possible new motorcycle from Husqvarna and this is one that gets me very excited indeed you see it combines two of my favorite bikes I’ve reviewed over the past couple of years firstly the Husqvarna vitpillin 701 which I just love the look of and the simple but Lively riding experience and then secondly the KTM 890 Duke R for me it’s just one of the best bikes to ride on the road right now for its awesome engine and Chassis even if it isn’t much of a looker and so I think you can probably see where we’re going with this one it’s a Husqvarna interpretation of the 890 Duke and so in this video we’ll go through the eight things that you need to know about it now a brief bit of context for anyone not familiar with KTM and Husky’s current situation KTM is owned by the Piero Mobility group and they bought Husqvarna from BMW back in 2013. since then they’ve made a bunch of bikes that are based upon existing KTMs from a technical perspective but just given their own distinct active modern more minimalistic styling so the VIP pillar and smart pill and 401 are both
based upon KTM single cylinder 390 platform with the VIP pill and having more of a sporty Road bias and the svar pill and taking a few Scrambler cues like the more upright riding position and the semi-knobbly tires same for the seven in one versions of those two bikes as well they’re based upon the KTM 690s and more recently they also took the KTM 890 adventure and turned it into something much more desirable in my opinion with the northern 901 so it seems to be a recipe for Success because KTM clearly know how to make incredible bikes to ride but the blatant out and out orangeness of them and the style it might not be for everyone and so the Huskies just offer a different option for the punter so how do we know that these new bikes will be based upon the 890 Duke we’ll take a look at the engine and you can see that it’s pretty much identical to ktm’s 889 CC lchc parallel twin the cases look pretty much the same the routing of the exhaust headers too but there are a couple of different versions of this engine and it’s not absolutely clear which one it might be so in the regular 890 Duke you get 92 newton meters a peak torque and about 114 horsepower but in the up specs 890 Duke car it’s about 99 newton meters a peak torque and just shy of 120 horsepower and obviously you’d hope for the latter in this Husqvarna version but I will say that the regular 890 Duke has more than enough grunt for some proper brisk Road riding this is one of my favorite engines on the market and one of the key reasons that I’m
New 2024 Husqvarna 901 Vitpilen & Svartpilen Spy Shots: 8 Things You Need To Know!
excited about this bike you see it’s super versatile because it makes plenty of torque and mid-range but also it revs up quite freely and has some proper top end fun it also sounds pretty nice too it’s got that 75 degree interval on the crank to mimic their 1290v Twins and I think it’ll have some of the essence of the 701s this bike but that engine was just a little bit limiting both in being a single and the character that that gives but all also it was about 70 horsepower Peak like I say I really enjoyed those bikes and it is plenty of fun even with that sort of moderate level of power but there have been discontinued now so this new 901 version it’s going to be you know 40 or 50 more horsepower which is going to make it a proper who to ride now wrapped around that Punchy motor we’ve got what looks like the same tubular steel frame and also another signature design feature of the KTMs with the open lattice swing arm which again is plain for all to see quite clearly we’ve got suspension from WP here so you can see on the fork and the white spring on the shock is their design too with WP being the in-house suspension brand at KTM and specifically you can see the fork adjusters on the top there which should suggest there’ll be a fully adjustable Fork like the 890 Duke car as opposed to the fixed damping of the standard 890 Duke and again this is another big plus point for me the 890s are great handling bikes and the suspension that they get is a big part of that now brakes look to be husqvarna’s own brand so not the top-notch Brembo star lemmas of the 890 Jew car but these will be perfectly good I mean generally ktm’s brakes are made by Jay Juan who are a huge manufacturer with a wealth of experience and I’ve just got done actually reviewing the 790 jig that has Jade One brakes but branded with KTM perfectly good plenty of power and so they should be easily good enough here too tires look to be from Michelin with their power fives so a sporty Road tire designed for both dry and wet use and that rounds off what
looks like a pretty tasty looking chassis package for the VIP pillar if not quite as premium as the 890 Duke R now the smart pillar as I’ve mentioned tends to be a bit more scrambler-y in its spec and so we can see from the picks that it gets Pirelli mt60 tires which are sort of flat track style and maybe you’ll get a little bit more suspension travel but it doesn’t look to be like massively different from the pictures comparing them side by side interestingly the biggest differentiator of these two bikes certainly when they were the 701s anyway was the riding position to make the VIP pillum feels Sports here and I guess a little bit like a modern Cafe Racer style it had pretty low clip-on bars and they had you well over the front the spark plug on the other hand had flat bars much more sat open like I say Scrambler inspired and while I did enjoy riding the VIP pillar and especially when you picked up a bit of speed realistically in town traffic and those other riding scenarios it did become a little bit of a niggling negative of that bike and it wasn’t particularly comfortable and so you can see how that might limit the appeal of it and limit the sales so with these two Nano ones they look like they’ll both get flat bars the smart pillar is still sitting a little bit higher but side by side again the riding positions now do look very similar so they now seem to be much much closer in terms of spec and in terms of how they’re going to feel to ride the only other different second spot is the styling you can see there’s a belly pan on the VIP pilling for a bit more of a sporty look the smart pillars running with a fly screen for a bit more of that Scrambler aesthetic and the radiator shrouds are a little bit different but otherwise you know they’re super similar and classic Husqvarna sort of style you’ve got the signature round headlight with the DRL around the outside the tail light too that’s another signature feature on these bikes the tank shape with those flat
sides is also very distinctive and super reminiscent of the 401 and 701 equivalents as is that white tail section with a very clean and modern shape now with the 890 Jukes you’ve got the air intakes a little bit unusually on the sides of the subframe there and you can see the same with these husqvarnas and then also you’ve got that typical husky exhaust shape which is very straight and then almost looks like cut off at the end Tech wise you’d expect it to inherit the full Suite of electronics from the 890 Jukes so they get plenty of riding modes traction control ABS with a Supermoto set in the quick shifter cruise control MSR which is the engine braking management and pretty much everything you could possibly need as well as all that you get a TFT Dash on those bikes with phone Integrations available so you can control your calls and music navigation and you can see something similar on these spy shots which would be a massively welcome upgrade because the old 701’s got this like round LCD display which probably wouldn’t quite cut it with the competition nowadays and also you need a way to manage all those settings so the TFT is a necessity and I’d expect it to be pretty much the same as the KTM equivalent although much like the aesthetic of the whole bike I’d expect the graphics in the screen to be redone in a sort of proper husky style and I mean they’ve already had a bit of a stab at that with the northern 901 versus the KTM 890 Adventure they’ve redone it in their own very minimal and clean star and I’ve got to say it’s actually one of my favorite features on that bike just for the Simplicity and ease of use and it just made the bike feel like really cool to use so more of the same here would of course be very welcome and now’s a good time to say a quick thanks to today’s video sponsor Speedo Angels because they make Dash protectors that could save you hundreds if not thousands take the dashes on the 890
Adventure or the Northern 901 for example they cost a fortune to replace and yet you could protect it from scratches and damage for just a few quid from Speedo Angels they also make Dash protectors for most new bikes from the major manufacturers and they’ve been kind enough to give us a 20 discount code specifically for our viewers and you’ll find it down in the description along with a link to their website so once again a massive thanks to Speedo angels for their support now there’s no indication of price yet of course because these are just spy shots after all but given that the spec doesn’t look to be like full 890g car level think of stuff like the brakes which aren’t quite as premium I’d expect it to be closer to the 10 grand of the standard 890 Duke than the sort of 11 and a half of the r model now around that price point is very competitive for naked bikes so it’ll be going up against stuff like the Triumph Street Triple R for about nine and a half Grand the Yamaha mt-09 at 9800 and maybe because of that slightly unusual aesthetic and the the round headlight it could well sway somewhere Riders away from
other Retros like the speed twin for example at 11795 or maybe the BMW r90 Pura 11750 or probably the closest actually would be the xsr 900 from Yamaha that’s uh 10 600. so yeah I reckon somewhere between that 10 and 11 Grand Mark is going to be about right for this level of bike as for a launch date well of course this is a prototype but it does look like it’s quite far along I mean most of the Bodywork which is usually very botched on early prototypes looks to be about right even if it’s not been painted and also most of the hardware looks to be pretty much there as well so hopefully we’ll see this one announced this year in time for the 2024 riding season as always I’d love to know what you think of it though down in the comments below and also let me know which one you’d pick the Savar pillen or the VIP pillen and I’ll leave you with my 790 Duke review that went up recently an absolute barg in this bike at 799 so do give it a watch let me know what you think thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one
