Suzuki may be getting all the attention here lately as an esteemed sport bike brand taking their know–how on two wheels, squaring it, and then dominating a world of bespoke four wheelers. Lest we forget however, Austrian bike maker KTM has been doing exactly that for fourteen years now, and unlike Suzuki, they did that with a car that customers can actually buy and legally drive on public roads... well, okay, that last part rather depends on where you live with this particular trim we have under the spotlight this week; meet the KTM X-Bow R, a track focused toy that's so hardcore, it exists on the fringes of legality and road worthiness.
Also, yes, it's pronounced "crossbow". I'm sorry to all of my readers out there who use text to speech to consume my ramblings, whom must think some mad lad at KTM felt an unfathomable need to invent a bow that fires axes instead of arrows.
For 100,000 of your hard earned credits, you get awfully little with the X-Bow—no sat nav, no radio, no leather, no carpets, no air con, no roof, no doors, not even windshield wipers... because there is no windshield to wipe. Awful value for money when you consider the fact that a comparably priced GT-R or Viper, the echelons of luxury in the automotive industry, has all the aforementioned frivolous toys while also being able to get you to and from your local racetrack regardless of where you live (unless it's Singapore. We DO NOT talk about Singapore). What you do get in exchange however, is a rear mid engined, carbon tubbed, ultra maneuverable cruise missile that weighs in at just a scant 790kg (1,742lbs), giving the 298HP (222kW) X-Bow R a much better power to weight ratio than the aforementioned cars.
...in theory, anyway.
In practice, it feels completely underwhelming. When you make more sacrifices in civility than a Viper, going so far as to rendering the car illegal to drive on public roads in some countries, the car naturally brings with it sky high expectations not only to its performance, but also in the sensations that it brings the driver as well, simply because it laser focuses on the one job it has, leaving itself no room for excuses. Going into my first test drive, I had been expecting to be able to brake super late into corners and the front end to slice in immediately into the apex with no more than mere brainwaves. But the X-Bow R oddly doesn't make any attempt to differentiate or juxtapose the experience of driving a road car from the experience of driving a purebred, dedicated racing machine; I brake for corners at Red Bull Ring in roughly the same points in it as I do an FD RX-7 shod with the same Sport Hard tyres. I struggle to get weight over the front of the tyres and getting them to bite on corner entry, and the rear end can get quite feisty on corner exits. There's no other way to describe it: driving the X-Bow R feels... like driving a normal car, rife with many of the same limitations and flaws that you might experience driving anything else less focused and more compromised that you could have bought off a showroom floor and driven home in comfort.
"But how can that be with a car with those numbers?", I hear you ask. Most of that I think is due to the disproportionately staggered tyres on on the X-Bow R—205/40R17 front and 255/35R18 rear, Most MR cars have a width difference of 40mm at most, but the X-Bow has a staggering (get it?) 50mm difference between the front and rear. Because of the rather slim front tyres, the X-Bow not only has to brake early for corners like a plebian road car with *scoff* roofs and air con, but it also has an extremely hard time biting into apexes when trail braking with a tiny friction circle, with the vast majority of the turning only taking place only when the brake pedal is almost fully let off. It also has a terrible time negotiating corners with deep, late apexes, and/ or corners with adverse camber. It would be such a shame if Turn 6 of Red Bull Ring has both the aforementioned characteristics, eh? The large difference in grip between the front and rear ends of the car also creates a dangerously snappy combination, wherein oftentimes, I'll be gradually feeding in steering angle and feathering the brakes, approaching the circumference of the front tyres' grip circle under hard cornering, fighting the understeer from the rear tyres and the prohibitive differential that binds them. When I cross that arbitrary threshold and "win", the thick rear tyres let go quickly and without warning mid corner, resulting in horrific snap oversteer you'd have to catch in an instant. This car forces drivers to quickly fight against and correct polar opposite problems in a minute amount of time, as though it has a split personality, neither of which are particularly pleasant to be around. It's rough.
Oh, and did I mention that the X-Bow doesn't come with ABS? Now, I'm no expert when it comes to driving without ABS, but I think I've driven my fair share of cars without ABS, from feeble, unassuming things like the AE86 to monstrosities like the Viper and Tuscan, but the X-Bow is easily the deadliest car of the bunch I've sampled under braking; once the wheels lock up, there simply isn't getting them back no matter how you pump, feather, or fellatiate the brake pedal. And of course, with any short wheelbase, turbocharged RMR car without traction control, caution has to be exercised out of corners as well. All things considered though, the X-Bow isn't even unruly or even unpleasant powering out of corners if you treat it with due respect and diligence... even if the engine sounds like audibly transmissible cancer.
Disproportionate tyres are one thing, but they're also attached to puzzlingly soft springs, especially for a track toy. It doesn't even take taking a corner to literally see what I mean; the exposed springs of the pushrod style double wishbone suspension up front visibly and prominently scrunch up on every upshift done with the 6 speed manual that is equipped on the car. If you can afford to keep an eye on the exposed springs, the car looks more like a Metal Slug boss rather than an actual, expensive toy when brought around a track at speed. The soft springs coupled with the not at all grippy Sport Hard tyres combine to make for an experience that is a far cry from that of a purpose built machines—it isn't face melting quick or mind bending sharp in the way that other racing toys like karts or prototypes overwhelm all but the most seasoned and trained drivers with, which I had been expecting coming into this week.
To be honest, I'm rather shocked myself at how underwhelming I found the X-Bow to be. I even tried it in Assetto Corsa to see if the simplistic simcade physics of Gran Turismo Sport is doing the X-Bow a disservice like it did the 991 GT3 RS, but nope! The AC version is strikingly similar to the GTS version of the car, just with more more proportionately powered brakes with relation to the tyres it has. Maybe this thing will be a total blast to drive in real life. Absent the pants fizzing, face shredding, kidney dislodging sensations of real life and being judged solely on its capabilities and behaviour on track, the X-Bow just feels... completely unexciting. A "normal" production car may lack its outright pace and lap times, but there are several of them that offer a more balanced, cohesive drive, such as the NSX-R or Audi R8 for example. After all, do you buy a track toy for the lap times, or do you buy a track toy for the fun? The X-Bow R feels to me like a toy that somehow forgot to be fun to drive.
[ TANGENTIAL RANT] It does have to be said though, that I think KTM had the right idea when setting up the X-Bow, because it can often be a foregone conclusion that something track focused must be the fastest thing ever, when in actuality, I find that many of the requisites in making a car fast also ruin how they drive. Giving the car downforce means lowering and stiffening the car to hell, making sure you aren't racing anyone in it while also making it a chore to drive on anything other than the smoothest of roads. Making a car stiff and grippy makes it snappy, meaning you need to be a racing car driver of experience with perfect conditions to really enjoy the car. Giving a car monstrous power also means giving it monstrous fuel tanks, radiators, drive lines, nannies, and so on, all of which just make the car heavy, cumbersome, and unintuitive to drive at any speed. And all of this, for what, exactly? Shaving an extra second or two off a lap time that skill could've easily compensated for? Sure, a second is a huge deal if you're Alex Albon racing Lewis Hamilton, but I'd be happy if I can get within five seconds of their lap times. Cars that chase outright performance numbers is just stupid and pointless in my eyes, especially now when technology allows us to have such ridiculous power that they'd be difficult to fully exploit even on a racetrack. Also, lest we forget, the most enjoyable cars to drive in automotive history, from AE86s, to RX-7s, and even the fabled McLaren F1, don't subscribe to many, if any, of the descriptors on that list. The fact that a barebones, track only car in the X-Bow doesn't fall into that slippery slope of what a track car "must be like" is surprising to me, and makes me very happy to see. Sure, there's a certain speed requirement to a track toy; no one, and I mean, NO ONE, wants to go to a racetrack and do Fiat 500 or Sambabus levels of speed (*glare*), but I think the X-Bow has that part covered. [END TANGENTIAL RANT]
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