The Bike of the Year award is not 100 percent performance-based, but for this winner it could be. The BOTY is a statement about where our market is going and how far manufacturers are pushing the envelope, which this bike does. It is a little groundbreaking, sometimes very practical and usually a bit controversial. Criteria met, the KTM 450 XC is a slam dunk and the easiest BOTY vote Karel Kramer can remember, and he's been through a few.
The 450 XC sacrifices very little in performance and about the biggest drawback may be one of its strongest California sales points. It comes with lean enough jetting to qualify for a green sticker, meeting the tailpipe emissions standard. Concerned about performance? Who doesn't change jetting on a race machine to achieve optimum performance, right? The XC isn't even equipped with a spark arrestor, so you can't ride it legally on public land in the first place. What kind of message is KTM trying to send? That the bike is a no-holds racing machine for closed-course use, which it is. But the right owner, who knows he wants that higher, more aggressive level of performance, has only to find a S/A-equipped muffler that meets sound (below 96 decibels) and it's clear sailing for any kind of riding his heart desires.
The XC comes with all the stuff that is nearly impossible to get on a motocross bike. A six-speed tranny and electric starting. Plus nuggets like steel valves instead of titanium, just to be on the safe side. It doesn't have the girth that so easily sticks to a "fully compliant" off-road bike, where regulations dreamt up deep in a bureaucratic den snuff out performance, with very little if any bearing on the real world. Leave the lights and odometers to the customer, if they desire. It evokes KTM's ready-to-race philosophy so well that the XC is plain and simply ready to ride. Anywhere.
And the anywhere part is what sets this bike into a new classification. Other makers have tried, but KTM seems to have struck the magic combination. It isn't a strict motocross bike, but it can do MX and do it quite well. The motor has plenty, and the suspension is stiff enough to handle it. Maybe its specialty, if we can say it has one, is the ability to race GNCC or WORCS or Grand Prix-style off-road, it has that completely covered. Going on a trail ride, the bike only gives a little in its standard setup, call it aggressive. The suspension is somewhat stiffer, but the motor has a tame nature for the toughest trail situations, while still being plenty SX-like in delivering excitement.
As good an individual machine as the 450cc is, the whole line of KTM XCs have the same focus and performance, just the displacement changes. For this, KTM takes Bike of the Year.