Enduro illustrated #15 May 2016

Philipp, can you begin by filling us in on how you arrived at the top of KTM’s R&D department?

“I started at KTM in 1998, quite a along time ago now. Always in R&D, I started as a designer on the 640 Duke II. After that I started as the project leader for the LC8 two cylinder engine. Then, after some time, I was head of department for all LC8 development. In 2005 I took over the whole chassis development so everything from 50cc up to at that time 990cc bikes. In 2010 I took over the whole R&D business in KTM.” Do you ride? We get the impression the R&D department’s a happy bunch who love riding bikes – is that true?

“Ha! Yes, we try to enjoy ourselves. In R&D there is nobody who doesn’t ride motorcycles because we think it is very important that the guys and girls feel the things that they do. It’s true that there is a lot of passion. Everyone knows KTM’s line ‘Ready To Race’. It is very true. For sure it would not be the same if we were in washing machine R&D! “I try to be on the bike as much as possible, but for sure I should ride more. We use different types of prototype stages and regularly go on rides – trips to Spain or around enduro tracks, race tracks, or just on the streets around Mattighofen.”

Now the road bike range is growing so rapidly, how important are enduro motorcycles to KTM? Are road bikes now more important?

“No, no, no. Enduro is always important to KTM. We are coming from enduro. The thing we know for maybe more than ten years now is the offroad segment is pretty much limited [in size]. For sure there are times when we have ups and downs but now together with Husqvarna we are selling around 80,000 bikes a year.

“In some countries we have shares of 70% of the enduro market and it is impossible to sell more. For that reason we put more effort into the street bike market because we want to sell more in that country. What’s important is that we did not put less effort on the enduro side, we put more effort on the street bike side.”