Category: Roadsters 
Price Range: No data available
Amazing engineering for the money, lightning fast, forgiving handling.
Dull sounding engine, throttle response, zero weather protection.
A capable and welcome addition to the ranks of the ultra-focused road racers.
If you have heard of KTM at all, it will be because of its exploits on two wheels, not four. After BMW it is Europe's biggest bike manufacturer but that's like Beinn Macdui claiming to be the second highest mountain in Scotland: on a global scale it's tiny.
And it is to stop becoming smaller still now that KTM has made the transition to car manufacturing. The unpalatable truth is that despite rising oil prices and more crowded roads, bike sales in Europe are sliding and KTM needs to diversify. The weapon it has chosen for this purpose is the X-Bow (pronounced crossbow). While cars like Caterhams and Ariels rely on steel spaceframe construction, the X-Bow has a pure carbon-fibre monocoque, similar to that of a Formula 1 car. The whole structure weighs about the same as a well-padded 6ft bloke.
The body has been designed entirely with function in mind, hence the exposed front suspension, the absence of doors, windows, windscreen or wipers and the addition of countless aerodynamic trickery on the surface and underneath the car that help to suck it to road at high speed.
It's rear-wheel drive and power comes from a 240bhp two-litre turbo four cylinder Audi motor through to a VW-supplied six-speed gearbox (there is no DSG option as yet).
One of the reasons it was called the X-Bow is that, in its day in the early middle ages, the crossbow was the most highly developed mechanical weapon a man could operate and KTM is keen to stress that the X-Bow is also a purely mechanical device. There's no ABS, ESP or traction control - it can't and won't think for you. The company wanted to produce as pure and no-nonsense a driver's car as humanly possible and, in the X-Bow that is precisely what they have achieved. It costs £43,329.
