CarBrandLogos archive · Husqvarna · 2018

HusqvarnaSvartpilen

KTM engineering under scrambler clothing, and a name that means black arrow.

Photo: Sebleouf · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Husqvarna history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Husqvarna Svartpilen, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

After acquiring Husqvarna in 2013, Pierer Mobility needed a road range that did not simply duplicate KTM's. The answer, launched in 2018, was to take KTM Duke platforms and dress them in something entirely different: flat bench seats, round headlights, exposed trellis frames finished in muted colours, and block-pattern tyres suggesting light off-road use that most owners never attempt.

2018 Husqvarna Svartpilen · Sebleouf · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

The styling came from Kiska, the Austrian studio responsible for KTM's own look, working here in the opposite direction, and the results are unusually coherent for what is fundamentally a re-clothing exercise. Svartpilen means black arrow in Swedish; a sharper café-styled sibling, the Vitpilen or white arrow, was sold alongside it.

In production

Engines have followed KTM's, from 125 and 250 singles for licence-restricted and Indian-built versions up to the 401 and the large 801 twin. Commercially it has been the most successful shape Husqvarna's road bikes have had, largely because it looks like nothing else on the showroom floor.

Technical specification