World Champion Production Line
KTM & Red Bull
Story by Red Bulletin
It’s not easy strutting through the KTM factory buildings after Heinz
Kinigadner. This tall man from the Tyrol strides along briskly. He
knows all the ins and outs of the assembly line, the manufacturing
bays and test benches. ‘Kini’ has a slightly stiff gait but his arms
dangle from the sleeves of his checked shirt as if he were some Wild
West sheriff. But Kini carries no Colt, and those stiff hips are a
throwback to his former life
as a motocross and rally-raid racer. Heinz Kinigadner was twice
Motocross World Champion, in 1984 and 1985, and later proved one of
the best and most fearless racers in endurance epics such as the Paris-
Dakar rally. The miles covered and falls taken have exacted their
price on his body, yet Kini is proud never to have taken the easy
option: “You’ve got to be ready to put up with a bit of blood in
motocross.”
Another challenge of our tour, apart from Kini’s pace, is that people
constantly come to talk to him. A quick “hello” here, a barbed
sentence or two there, the odd handshake. You’re wandering around with
someone who’s appreciated by everybody and without whom none of this
would work. But Kinigadner doesn’t have an official title at KTM. Nor
does he have one of the chip-cards that all other KTM employees need
to walk through the turnstiles at the entrance to the factory in the
small Austrian town of Mattighofen. He is, nevertheless, the
undisputed right-hand man of CEO Stefan Pierer.
Pierer attracted Kini to the then near-bankrupt KTM almost 20 years
ago, at the same time bringing in financial syndicate Cross Industries
AG to help fix their finances, thus starting KTM’s ascent to the top
of the motocross world...
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday: KTM’s mantra is to humble its opponents
in off-road competitions right from the outset, and that includes
Japan’s two-wheeled giants. The first Six Days factory team came about
as early as 1964 when the company was still being run by the founding
Trunkenpolz family (the ‘T’ in KTM). In 1973 they won their first
Motocross World Championship title, thanks to Gennady Moiseev of the
USSR. By the end of 2009 they had won 173 motocross and Enduro titles;
by the end of this year they’ll add another 15 or 16. Following
bankruptcy and instability triggered by management with little
interest in motorsport, the motorbike division of KTM Sportmotorcycle
GmbH was set up in 1992 under Pierer’s leadership. KTM became a public
limited company in 1994, manufacturing scramblers and road bikes under
the motto “Ready to Race” (producing about 66,000 units in the
2009/2010 financial year).
The company is now called KTM Power Sports AG and even if Pierer has
never been a top sportsman, his philosophy is to live and breathe
competition every day. He can pack in 48 hours-worth of work, if the
job requires it.
Doesn’t the knowledge that KTM would be dead if it weren’t for its
sporting success (60 per cent of sales are racing models) make work
seem like a relentless pursuit as part of the rat race?
Pierer agrees, but adds that the rat race is good training. And the
results back him up: in the competitive Enduro area, KTM are world
market leaders with more than 50 per cent market share. They’re not
quite there yet in motocross, but with the new 350 they’ve practically
reinvented the sport. Their Japanese competitors still dominate the
overall market, but as a premium brand, KTM makes more per unit. For
Pierer, nothing beats beating the Japanese.
He has already laid the groundwork for KTM’s future so that their
sporting ventures will have a solid foundation to build on. Cross
Industries AG, which has a controlling stake in KTM, has focused its
other investments on the automotive industry – companies such as
Pankl, the specialists for the inner components of racing engines.
Formula One would have to shut its doors were it not for Pankl and as
KTM engines are now technically just smaller F1 motors, its closeness
to Pankl gives an invaluable competitive edge.
Meanwhile the Freeride, based on a motocross 125 model, will herald
the start of electric motocross bike production next spring. It’s
intended as a “feel-good recreational vehicle” for areas whose
wintersports infrastructure goes unused in summer – ski resorts in
other words. “A lift valley station is an ideal charging point,”
Pierer confirms. Alternative power with a sporting touch. Very KTM.
A partnership with Indian bike giant Bajaj (2.5 million motorbikes are
manufactured each year) is the starting point for a further image and
technological overhaul. Having had to withdraw from road racing in
2008 due to the global economic crisis, KTM would like to move back
into the Moto3 category in 2012. Moto3 uses 250cc, single-cylinder,
four-stroke engines – home from home for KTM, which wants to become
the driving force behind a fully faired Bajaj motorbike.
Then there’s the Dakar Rally, in South America in January 2011. It
could be just the shot in the arm KTM needs; a 10th successive victory
would be pretty good PR for its soon-to-be-established Brazilian
subsidiary. (Brazil’s bike market is one and a half times the size of
Europe’s at 1.4 million units per year.)
KTM’s director of sport, Pit Beirer, is an important bridgehead
towards sporting success. The German former world-class motocrosser
started at KTM in 2003, “on the sidelines,” as he puts it. He is
paraplegic and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since a racing
accident in 2002. Beirer was robust in his criticism of some of KTM’s
ways from the outset. Such as the engineers’ arrogance in failing to
listen to the riders when they complained of shortcomings. In 2004,
Beirer took charge of Sports Management and with Kinigadner’s help was
able to set up new structures. Beirer’s opening gambit was taking on
Belgium’s former World Champion Stefan Everts as off-road racing
director.
A former Yamaha man, Everts had been cast aside after retiring in 2006
having won his fifth title for Yamaha (he won 10 in all). One
handshake later and Everts – a good friend of Beirer’s – was on board=
,
bringing with him a wealth of money-can’t-buy experience.
Beirer’s latest catch is Roger De Coster. The 66-year-old Belgian was
a five-times motocross champion before moving to the USA where he
headed the Honda and Suzuki teams. De Coster also successfully guided
the US team through the Motocross of Nations, the unofficial team
World Championship. Under his guidance, the USA has won the event 20
times out of 29 since 1981. Like Everts, De Coster was also unhappy
with his former employers for refusing to guarantee long-term
prospects. Beirer won De Coster over by promising to provide the
perfect conditions for the development of a KTM team in the USA.
Beirer explains, “You don’t get people like Roger with money. You get
them by providing the ideal environment.” With De Coster’s help, KTM
would like to gain a foothold in AMA Supercross, the US’s popular
indoor series. Beirer continues, “With the narrow circuits, jumps,
special surface and sprint distances, indoor races demand a particular
strategy. Roger knows all the tricks.”
While other manufacturers rely on five-year plans, KTM invests in the
short- term. And it only takes two years for an idea to become a
successful motorbike. That was the time-scale with the 350, with which
Antonio Cairoli won KTM’s first MX1 – the premier league of the MX
World Championship – in 2010. (Ideally a prototype should be ready for
its first tests within two months.) The first framework for the
Italian’s 350 was conceived inside the head of Swiss amateur crosser
Michael Achleitner. No design drawing. No computers. Which brings us
on nicely to KTM’s next plus point: several current or former
sportsmen work in the research and development department, which
increases efficiency immensely.
Then there’s having the courage to take an unorthodox approach, which
Pierer always encourages in his colleagues. For instance, Kinigadner
and his team had known for some time that the lap times for the MX2 (a
maximum of 250cc and 40bhp) were often better than those for the more
powerful MX1 (a maximum of 450cc and 65bhp). Less power meant fewer
disruptive load changes and better driveability, “because physically
it makes quite a difference if you haven’t got a traction engine
constantly on the go underneath you”, as Kinigadner puts it. So they
pursued the idea of reducing the MX2 by 100cc and 10bhp and testing it
against a 350. The project started in April 2007, just after Stefan
Everts, who had always been the best driver technically in his day and
always took the cleanest cornering lines, had joined KTM. He was the
perfect test driver for the 350 venture.
The result of this voluntary loss of power was a World Championship
title for Cairoli. And a conceptual head-start which the competition
will only be able to rival in two years’ time as the crisis in the
bike market has also worn away at the development budgets of the big
four: Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki.
The icing on KTM’s development cake is entering prototypes in national
championships and long-term tests on World Championship-style circuits
in Spain, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Sardinia. Bernhard Plazotta, the
man in charge of the chassis, initiates little expeditions for the
occasions with mobile garages where the chassis can be reconstructed
with welding equipment, if need be. Such efforts and the quality they
produce place KTM in a favourable position; whereas in the past you
had to attract stars to your factory team with a lot of money, they
now come of their own accord and beg for a test-drive.
KTM also has a sophisticated scouting system. Jointly responsible for
that is Stefan Everts’ father Harry, another former five-time World
Champion and owner
of a motocross school in Spain. This year also saw the start of a new
talent scheme, the Champions Academy. The best youths (aged up to 14)
will secure a place on a World Championship team.
The motorbikes are also subject to the scrutiny of their designer
Gerald Kiska. He entered a KTM design competition over 20 years ago
because as a fan –
“I had a KTM bicycle when I was a child” – he felt that the brand had
little to offer beyond the sexiness of its performance. “If they don’t
do something, they’ll never get anywhere.” He won the competition but
his design was never brought to life.
The basic tenet of Kiska’s designs is to lay bare the company’s roots,
“...and KTM has a thorny old history.” And to bring the brand motto to
life. “Ready to race, that’s what our products should unapologetically
embody.” Kiska is right, that KTM’s motorbikes have an aggressive look
about them. “They’re competitive machines. And KTM is a tiny player in
a huge world market. No one will ever pay us any attention if we don’t
stand out from the crowd.”
One of the most important design decisions Kiska ever made was
choosing orange as their corporate colour. The unpopular hue was
hardly used in the mid-1990s, so KTM has stood out ever since. Will
orange age well? Kiska replies, “Does red get old? Ferrari are happy
to be red every day. I embrace orange as our corporate colour.”
Kiska involves the racers in the design process. The guys come to try
things out, up to 10 times sometimes, and then they complain down to
the last millimetre. They don’t really care about the shape. All they
care about is how functional it is. Kiska says that only rarely is he
praised. For example, Stefan Everts once said with astonishment, “And
it looks good, too.” Kiska continues, “For some reason, he seems to
have been surprised.”
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