X-Bow Street (Austria, 2007)

The X-Bow is KTM first car model. The prototype was unveiled at Geneva Motor Show in March 2007. One year later, in June 2008, the car hit the production lines at Graz factory, Austria. 350 units were sold during that year.

Since KTM had no experience in building cars, it partnered up with Audi, components, and Dallara, racing know-how.

With the X-Bow four-cylinder TFSI engine, KTM tried to get lightness, high performance and high-tech in the car. With 1,998 cm³, 240 hp, 300 NM (Audi 2.0 TFSI), it goes from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.9 seconds. It’s fuel consumption is 7,2 l/100 km. It comes with manual 6-gear transmission.

KiskaDesign was the responsible for the overall look of the X-Bow. The Salzburg-based design firm has been since the mid 90s responsible for the design of KTM motorcycles. According with KTM, the originality of the X-Bow is to incorporate many features that are more “closely associated with motorcycles than with cars”. The concept of the car is to keep it simple: lights are simple headlamps and there is no roof, doors or windscreen. Only a 70-millimeter, transparent wind deflector is set. The monocoques are carbon fibre which reduces the weight of the vehicle to 790 kilos.

The car’s length is 3.738 m, the width is 1.915 and the height is as low as 1.202.