2025 KTM 450 SMR Review

There are very few motorcycles in the world that can make grown men giggle like schoolgirls than a supermoto, and the KTM 450 SMR is here to make sure that trend continues.

Photography by Ryan Nitzen & Jon Beck

Let me start this review with a question. How is it possible that the supermoto form of motorcycle sport is not more popular than it is? Supermoto represents everything good about motorcycling. Massive acceleration, full huck sideways tarmac drifts, dirt jumps, more drifts, bigger jumps, more acceleration…

For my money, supermoto is the perfect mix of everything I love about motorcycle riding. I even have gone as far as buying my own supermoto, a 2019 Husqvarna FS450, that I bought just after the national launch way back when. It has since served as the ideal road racing training partner, antidepressant and therapist.

Things have moved on a bit since I bought ol’ Betsy in 2019, with KTM—unsurprisingly—leading the charge with their 450 SMR. KTM is one of the only big-time manufacturers that currently sells a factory-built supermoto (not even sister brand Husqvarna does anymore), the other being Italian supermoto stalwarts TM with their gorgeous SMK 450 ES FI and their junior SMX 85 two-stroke, but that brand isn’t quite as easily purchased in America due to their vastly smaller dealer network.

KTM’s 2025 450 SX-F motocross weapon provides the base for the 450 SMR, so many of the changes wrought on the 2025 SX-F are present on this slick-shod counterpart. The most notable of these is the new frame, which has cutouts at the top of the shock mount for more flex, with reduced wall thickness. More flex gives more feel, and more feel equals greater rider confidence. This is the same theory Ducati has recently employed with their new-gen Panigale sportbikes, which makes them easier to ride fast for a broader range of riders.

The big change for 2025 is the introduction of the WP Xact closed-cartridge spring fork, replacing the WP AER 48mm air fork that has been on this model and the old Husqvarna for ages. The new spring fork was developed by KTM’s S1GP star and former AMA Supermoto Champion Lukas Höllbacher, who went a full second faster around KTM’s test track after switching to the spring fork.

The spring fork features a new mid-valve piston design concept that reduces the fork fluid oxidization and foaming and helps maintain consistent damping across the full range of the stroke.

KTM says the spring fork works better for the finite demands of supermoto riding than the air fork, which was developed primarily for motocross riding with the fork spending more time at the bottom of the stroke in areas like jumping and in the whoops with the air fork’s greater bottoming-out control.

More so than the new softer frame, the spring fork was the biggest difference I noticed during my day on the SMR. The new fork has a more tangible feel at high lean angles with the kind of brake pressure normally used in road racing. I was lucky enough to have my air-forked Husqvarna at this test and could thus do a back-to-back comparison, and while I will grant you my bike is a fair bit older, the differences were nonetheless evident.

High-speed braking and turning were better on the spring fork. Rebound control was also a factor in that KTM would continue to track its chosen line better than my Husky’s air fork, which had a bit of a dead spot at the point the front brake lever was released—something that was especially prevalent in low-speed, high-lean-angle corners like hairpins.

Other improvements the SMR gets for 2025 is a redesigned rear linkage and smaller linkage bolts, and it keeps the same swingarm that was introduced on the 2023 SMR. This was the first year the SMR got a dedicated swingarm that wasn’t a direct fit from the SX-F.

Acceleration from the now 63-horsepower 450cc single-cylinder motor is absolutely superb, not just in how much go it’s got but how it puts it to the ground. Thanks largely to the revised rear suspension, the KTM doesn’t wheelie anything like my Husqvarna would when marching through the gears, even with the 2025 SMR’s drastically increased horsepower number over my mid-50s-horsepower Husky.

Just like the KTM 450 SX-F, the SMR comes with a soft and hard throttle map (both offer the same horsepower, just a varied response at the twistgrip), traction control and launch control, and a quickshifter that allows clutchless, full-throttle upshifts from second to fifth gear.

The quickshifter is good, but not great. It doesn’t like shifts that are grabbed in a hurry, so you need to slow your movements down 10 percent to get guaranteed full-gas gearshifts. However, doing a back-to-back with my old-school Husky, the KTM’s quickshifter is for sure worth the money.

Pin the 450 to the stop down the straight, pull the Suter slipper-clutch lever in and jam down three gears at once, dump the clutch and let the Suter take care of the rest as you modulate the front and rear brakes in an endorphin-filled two-wheel drift.

The Suter does its job beautifully, almost entirely eliminating any rear wheel chatter and letting you smear the tarmac with your own Metzeler signature. Helping here is the Brembo M50 front brake gripping a single 310mm disc and radial master cylinder, the trio offering plenty of stopping power but lacking a little in that deft master-cylinder feel I love so much from real racing units.

The rear brake runs a single-piston caliper and 220mm disc, a setup KTM has (for my money) got absolutely spot on for the right balance of feel and power, letting you get great modulation and stopping/drifting power without locking the rear wheel.

Being the wimp I am, I stuck with the softer throttle map for the first half of the day and graduated to the harder map for the final two sessions. And to be perfectly honest, there really wasn’t that big a difference (at least to my brain). I tend to think the different throttle maps would make more of an impression in lower grip situations, like, er, motocross, but for smooth tarmac supermoto riding, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two.

Oh, and the traction control makes very little difference if it’s on or off, and I’ll put that down to the frankly insane grip levels afforded by the Metzeler K1 supermoto soft compound tires. You need to be seriously cack-handed to break traction on the throttle with these tires—they have so much grip that using traction control slows you down more than anything. Just let the mechanical grip of the German/Italian rubber help you out and let the motor remain unmolested by the electronic safety aids.

The motor is the same as before, except for a redesigned intake sleeve and airbox cover, which is now made of thicker plastic that doesn’t deform as much under hard acceleration, thus allowing more air into the airbox and more power to be made.

Ergonomically speaking, the SMR gets new fuel tank shrouds with the graphics printed directly onto them rather than being stick-on units. This looks cool, but if you go down on tarmac, which you almost certainly will at some point, you’ll probably end up scratching your new shrouds. At that point, you’ll either have to fit stick-on graphics to cover the gashes or replace the shrouds entirely.

Another nice little piece is the gripper-style seat covering. In full Alpinestars leathers, the seat material holds you in place so much better than the smoother covering I have on the Husky, which in turn allows you to better center your weight, especially on acceleration.

Later in the day, I was given the go-ahead to take former AMA Supermoto Champion Chris Fillmore’s recently built racer for a spin. Based on the 2025 SMR, Fillmore’s weapon had pretty much everything possible done to it, including full factory WP suspension, triple clamps, engine work, twin-disc front brakes, a 30mm shorter swingarm and a 16-inch front wheel.

If the stock bike was impressive, Fillmore’s steed was another level, especially on acceleration. The man himself couldn’t say, but I’d bet this bike had upwards of 70 horsepower on tap, making it absolutely vaporize anything in its path. But it retained the character the stock bike possessed of being so easy to use. The 16-inch front wheel was also a revelation. Turning was a case of waiting until the absolute last second, hooking your head into the direction you wanted to go, and the bike would turn on a quarter. It was a wild experience and an insight into what you can do with a wide-open budget and KTM’s PowerParts catalog at your disposal.

But for mere mortals, the 2025 KTM 450 SMR is an incredibly sharp tool and will provide years of riding and sliding before you get bored. This motorcycle is not a Swiss Army knife. It’s a Japanese Katana sword, not great at many things but the thing it is good at, it does it better than anything else.

Supermoto is one of the greatest things ever to happen to motorcycle racing, and with bikes like this available to the public, it should be far more popular than it is.

Suddenly, ol’ Betsy’s place in the garage looks decidedly under threat from the pretty new bike dressed in orange.CN

VIDEO | Supermoto Riding On The New 2025 KTM 450 SMR

 
 

2025 KTM 450 SMR Specifications

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