Ever since Indian mega motorbike company Bajaj Auto stepped in to save KTM’s bacon, it’s seemed like the motorbike world has breathed a collective sigh of relief. Because the truth is, few (if any) people actually wanted to see the brilliant orange dream of KTM completely disappear from the world.
After all, motorcycling would be a boring place if everyone only ever did exactly the same thing as everyone else, wouldn’t it? There’s a reason that KTM, as a brand, has so many fans worldwide, and it’s definitely not because of some questionable decisions in how it dealt with customer complaints about certain camshaft issues. But since I brought that issue up, it’s also the same reason that many will collectively forgive the company for a mistake that big, and likely allow Team Orange to win back their trust.
It’s also the same reason that RideApart received some interesting responses to the news that KTM itself said it couldn’t continue with the X-Bow project after its restructuring with Bajaj in charge. Even though that news came from KTM’s new CEO, Gottfried Neumeister, and was stated by him in an interview in absolutely no uncertain terms, it seems that bad news was too much for some to bear.
There’s a lot of love for KTM, it turns out.
With that in mind, if you’re a fan of the KTM X-Bow, you might have a somewhat mixed reaction to the news I’m about to drop on you now. You see, Neumeister and KTM were serious about no longer continuing with KTM Sportcar GmbH (the X-Bow focused KTM subsidiary, which was indeed still a part of big KTM thanks to the complicated business nesting doll structure of Pierer Industrie AG and all its many subsidiaries).
But as it happens, they didn’t kill X-Bow off after all.
Instead, they entered talks to hive off KTM Sportcar GmbH and sell it instead. And now, it seems they’ve found a bevy of investors who are willing, ready, and have already reportedly signed the contracts to take X-Bow off of KTM’s hands. This is all pending regulatory approval in Austria, of course, according to Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.
Enough drawing out the suspense already, though; you probably want to know who’s buying X-Bow, right? While the names of most of the investors haven’t been released, the family that’s heading up the investor group has already spoken publicly about the purchase.
It’s none other than the De Mevius family—the Belgian founders of AB InBev, which is currently the single largest brewery group in the world. The beer brands owned by AB InBev span a wide range, and include Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, and far too many beer brands (including some you might think are small and local) to list here. So instead, if you’re curious, I’ll point you to a nice, long list if you want to try to wrap your mind around it all.
The exact purchase price has not officially been disclosed at this point, but is rumored to be around 10 million Euros. Some of the other investors are reportedly involved in motorsport and entrepreneurship, which doesn’t really tell us much. Some or all of the additional investor group are also from Austria.
For those unfamiliar, brothers Frederic and Gregoire De Mevius currently sit at the head of AB InBev, and Gregoire is a well-known former rally driver and lifelong motorsport enthusiast. With that background in mind, perhaps it won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that the investor team has big plans for X-Bow, including potential expansion to offer a more off-road focused model in the future.
