As KTM and MV Agusta move closer in their business dealings, we see another change-up coming to the Italian company’s adventure bike lineup. According to regulatory paperwork revealed byMotorcycle.com, the Lucky Explorer 9.5 adventure bike will now be renamed as the MV Agusta Enduro Veloce.
Why the name change? Perhaps the Lucky Explorer name was deemed too closely-associated with the Lucky Strike cigarette adverts of the desert racing bikes of the 1980s, and some insiders thought it distasteful. Maybe some of the KTM leadership just didn’t like the name, and since they were charged with the bike’s sales, they wanted something different. At Motorcycle.com, Dennis Chung suggests it’s also related to MV Agusta’s brand history:
Changing the name also helps to avoid the… elefant… in the room, as in the Enduro Veloce’s connection to the Cagiva Elefant. Both MV Agusta and Ducati claim a lineage with Cagiva, and Ducati was able to beat MV Agusta to market with its own Elefant-inspired ADV, the DesertX. MV Agusta owns the rights to Cagiva (MV was technically a subsidiary of Cagiva before eventually becoming the dominant brand), but it has generally skirted around mentioning the brand when promoting the Lucky Explorer.
Motorcycle.comalso has some photos of updated livery for the new bike—see ’emhere.
The news of the name change comes from Australian documents, as MV Agusta filed papers with regulators there. It’s good to see the three-cylinder adventure bike project is still heading towards release, instead of waiting in Development Hell. The paperwork means the Lucky Explorer 9.5 has avoided the fate of the smaller Lucky Explorer 5.5. Earlier this month,company leadership told journos that MV Agusta had put its plans for the smaller made-in-China adventure bike on hold.
That move came after KTM’s leadership questioned the point of the Lucky Explorer 5.5, and alsocanceled their own middleweight 490 twin project. And, remember that KTM might not absolutely control MV Agusta, but it’s calling a lot of the shots now, it seems, asKTM此次将为will sell and service MV Agusta’s bikes in global markets in coming years. KTM showrooms going to have V-twin 1290-series adventure bikes, and the 890/790 parallel twins, and now these new three-cylinder MVs—bikes that KTM didn’t develop. It’s going to mean a lot of work for KTM to learn these machines and their maintenance needs and other support details in coming months.
MV Agusta also has naked bikes that will compete with KTM’s own offerings. At least MV Agusta’s sportbikes have no direct competition in the KTM lineup. Don’t be surprised to see these machines as the focus of the KTM/MV Agusta partnership in the years to come as a result.
As for the Lucky Explorer 9.5 … errrr, the “Enduro Veloce.” There’s been no official launch date announced yet. Expect more details at EICMA, but we wouldn’t be surprised if this was pushed back to a 2025 release in North America at this point.
