KTM 250 XC-W (2025 M.Y. demo ride)

If I was to buy one of the bike models that I demo'd over the two days, this would be the one! This was my first demo ride at this year's (2024) Corduroy event and the bike ended up being my favourite. In retrospect, I wish this hadn't been my first demo bike so that I would have already had a lap on this year's demo course to get to know it a bit so I could have pushed this bike a bit harder. My reason was that last year the 250 and 300 XC-W bikes were the most popular and had the longest wait times of any model from any brand and I didn't get to try either one. But I came two days earlier this year and got to do the demos before things got too crowded and before I was tired out from a full day's ride on the race course so I probably could have tried a different bike first. Oh well.

As with the 300 XC-W that I liked almost as much, I loved the handling, the power delivery, and the low-end torque. The link-less PDS suspension was fine even in high speed chop and acceleration/braking bumps. There weren't any whoops to test it on but I think it would be fine on them. (Still not quite as good as the Yamaha KYB suspension but it's pretty close now.) I would probably make some minor set-up adjustments if this was my bike but I could comfortably ride and race this bike all day as is. It's difficult to tell how this TBI bike is compared to the previous TPI versions because my bike is a 150 and it has a TSP head insert, injector relocation kit, and TSP remap of the ECU so it would be an apples to oranges comparision. There were no Betas or Shercos to try this year so there was no way to compare how the TBI felt compared to the carbed Italian and French bikes.