Brabus 1400 R Heading to US

A year ago in March of 2024, a set of trademark applications revealed that German car-tuning brand Brabus was planning a new set of KTM-based motorcycles to wear the name “Brabus 1400 R.” We’re still waiting for the machines to be released, but it now looks like they’re intended to become the first Brabus bikes to reach the US market.

Brabus is intrinsically linked to a long-running series of fast, Mercedes-based cars, going back decades, but back in 2022 the brand spread ambitions to motorcycles, joining forces with KTM to create the Brabus 1300 R, based on the 1290 Super Duke R’s chassis and engine, but wrapped in Brabus-specific bodywork. An initial run of 154 bikes sold out in minutes despite a high price approaching $45,000, and a second version of the machine followed in 2023. This time 290 were made, with slightly altered styling and colors to distinguish them from the originals, and they again sold out nearly instantaneously. Inevitably, that led to a third-generation bike, again with new colors, with a run of 50 Masterpiece Edition versions that ended the production of the 1300 R.

By then, of course, KTM’s 1290 Super Duke R was on the verge of being superseded by the 1390 Super Duke R Evo, with an enlarged 1350cc V-twin and variable valve timing for a performance boost over its predecessor. The emergence of three Brabus 1400 R trademark applications last year (for the Brabus 1400 R Signature, Brabus 1400 R Rocket, and Brabus 1400 R Tailor Made) pointed to a future trio of bikes, which would logically be based on the 1390 Super Duke R.

Now we can confirm that’s precisely what they’re based on, as the Brabus 1400 R appears on the latest set of documents issued by the EPA listing bikes that have been approved as meeting US emissions standards. The Brabus 1400 R shares the same certification as the KTM 1390 Super Duke R, indicating it’s mechanically identical to the Austrian bike, just as the previous Brabus 1300 R shared the 1290 Super Duke R’s main components.

Notably, though, the 1300 R was never certified for the US market, and customers from the States couldn’t buy them when the online order books opened. With the EPA certification of the 1400 R, that looks set to change for the next edition, potentially indicating that a larger number of the bikes will be made to satisfy demand in the USA as well as the rest of the world.

With the same emissions certification as the Super Duke R, we know that the Brabus will share identical performance, with a peak power of 188 hp (up from 177 hp for the 1300 R) at 10,000 rpm, and 107 lb.-ft. of torque at 8000 rpm. The EPA listing shows just one model—simply called the Brabus 1400 R—rather than the Signature, Rocket, and Tailor Made designations that appeared in last year’s trademark applications. All three trademarks were granted, which comes as something of a surprise as the “Rocket” name appears, on the face of it, to conflict with Triumph’s existing hold on that title for its Rocket 3 models. It’s a long-standing designation used by Brabus on its cars as well, though. Brabus has also used the “Signature” and “Tailor Made” names in the past on speedboats and Smart cars respectively.

The elephant in the room regarding the 1400 R is, of course, KTM’s current financial woes. The Austrian company has been operating under insolvency rules since November last year and only recently agreed terms with its creditors to prevent bankruptcy. It now has until May to pay a 30% quota of its debts to those creditors and needs around 800 million euros of new investment to do it and to get production—which has been on hold to help reduce oversupply of bikes—back on track. Preexisting plans to launch the Brabus 1400 R may have been put on ice during the reshuffle but given how fast the previous iterations of the bike sold out and the huge profit margins they appeared to offer thanks to prices more than double those of the mechanically identical 1390 Super Duke R, it’s unlikely that the project has been canceled.