RideLust

Last night, noted motorhead authority, Top Gear, bestowed the honorable distinction of “Sports Car of the Year” upon the German KTM X-Bow extreme sports car. Newcomers to the sports car game, KTM-Sportmotorcycle AG is a very strong, established company within the European motorcycle racing circuit who decided to translate their brilliant motorcycle design into sports car terms. The result was the KTM X-Bow, a prototype of which was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in 2007 to a crowd of undeniably impressed onlookers. The production KTM X-Bow debuted at that very same show a year later in 2008 and differed very little from the concept model. Building (literally and figuratively) from a company philosophy of “Ready to Race”, although the KTM X-Bow appears for all intents and purposes to be a Formula 1 racer, it is completely street legal (at least by European standards).

Powered by a 2.0L 4-cylinder TFSI engine borrowed from Audi/VW, the KTM X-Bow is capable of producing 177 kW (240 hp) at 5500 rpm and 310 Nm (229 lb-ft) across a broad rev range of 2000 – 5500 rpm. Maxing out at 137 mph, what earned the X-Bow the respect of Top Gear crowd was not the raw power of the engine itself, but rather what the X-Bow could do with that power. On the track, the KTM X-Bow can accelerate from 0-62 mph in just 3.91 seconds and reach 99 mph in a mere 8.9 seconds.

So impressed were the Top Gear elite, not only did they officially dub the KTM X-Bow the 2008 Sports Car of the Year, both KTM’s CEO, Stefan Pierer, and the KTM X-Bow’s Chief Chassis Engineer, Loris Bicocchi, were crowned Top Gear’s “Men of the Year.”