Revived motorbike brand Husqvarna used last week’s EICMA motorcycle show to showcase a new adventure touring concept, called the Norden 901.
Billed as the company’s first touring bike, the Norden 901 uses KTM’s 890cc parallel twin engine – no surprise considering the extremely close links between KTM and Husqvarna, and has a classic adventure bike look with spoked wheels, 21” at the front and 18” at the rear. Graphics are white, yellow and blue, in the Husky corporate theme, and the detailing looks smart with integrated engine bars and a substantial looking bash plate to protect the engine when ridden off road. As we’ve come to expect from Husqvarna, the Norden 901 looks to have high end chassis components, with solid looking WP suspension front and rear and retro style shrouds over the front brake discs.
There’s no news as to whether or not the Norden 901 will make it into production, but it would be very unusual for a manufacturer to develop such a complete concept bike without having an eye on putting it on sale sometime in the future, suggesting that Husqvarna (or sister company KTM) will have something in showrooms sooner rather than later.
The Norden 901 was the star of the revived Swedish (but now based alongside KTM in Austria) company’s 2020 offering.
Other than the obligatory colour changes throughout the range, the 701 Supermoto and 701 Enduro models also received new electronics packages, while a ‘long range’ version of the 701 Enduro (dubbed the 701 Enduro LR) comes in with a 25-litre fuel tank and a 310 mile range.
Husqvarna also used EICMA to launch their new FR250GP Moto3 bike and team. The 250cc racer is, unsurprisingly, heavily based on KTM’s RC250R Moto3 racer and will be ridden by Italy’s Romano Fenati and young Spaniard Alonso Lopez in a team run by multiple world champion Max Biaggi.
Husqvarna is one of the oldest motorcycle brands in the world. An industrial business manufacturing everything from guns to sewing machines, the Swedish company made their first motorbike in 1903 and went on to become one of the leading lights in motocross racing in the 1950s and 1960s.
The brand was sold to Cagiva in the late 1980s and production was moved to Italy, alongside MV Agusta. In 2007, BMW bought the company and, despite big plans, was unable to turn it into a mainstream force. KTM owner Stefan Pierer bought Husqvarna from BMW in 2013, moving production to Austria and developing a series of new models sharing their mechanical underpinnings with the KTM range.
