Just when you thought every conceivable corner of the middleweight streetbike landscape has been covered, along comes the Husqvarna Svartpilen 801. Part scrambler, part roadster, part commuter, part flat-tracker, part high-tech hooligan and part eye-catching style statement, it doesn’t follow the rules set by others. Instead the Svartpilen 801 gleefully refuses to slot into a simple, single category.
Visually, there are plenty of nods to Husqvarna’s off-road heritage. There’s the Pirelli MT 60 RS tyres, with their distinctive flat-track tread pattern. There’s the wide, cross-braced handlebar. There’s a single retro-style round headlight. And there’s the high-rise exhaust, the silencer tucked tight up against the tail just like a dirtbike.
But the Svartpilen is no rose-tinted throwback. Its lines and silhouette are modern to the point of bordering on sci-fi. That headlight is LED, as is all the bike’s lighting. The dash is a colour TFT. Wheels are cast, brakes are radial, suspension is multi-adjustable – it’s the chassis spec you’d expect of a sporty streetbike. So, at first, it’s kinda hard to know what to make of it all.
Scratch beneath the surface and things feel a lot more familiar. At its heart is a tightly packaged 799cc parallel twin with an entirely contemporary design; four-valve heads, water cooling, a full ride-by-wire throttle. Its crankpins are separated by 75°, giving it the firing interval, feel and sound of a narrow-angle V-twin. It revs to around 10,000rpm and peak power is a healthy 77kW (103hp). Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before. If you have, it’s because the Svartpilen shares its engine with KTM’s 790 Duke (though the lump itself
