SCOOP AWESOME KTM/RD350 special built by kid in India

Now THIS is what we want to have a go on next – this absolutely gorgeous mash-up between a KTM Duke 390 and a Yamaha RD350.

This special has been built in India by Aseem Singh Pawar and is officially called the RD-Duke.

Pawar (pictured below) lovingly calls his bike the ‘Flying Sikh’ and has done all of the work himself as part of his company, Inline3.

The frame has had to be modified to take the 45bhp, USA-spec RD screamer and there’s been a lot of neat updating to the bodywork (all made out of hand-beaten metal), it took Pawar two years to build. He said: “It’s been a very stressful journey at times because I have had to learn so much as I am going along. It took me three months to fabricate the engine mounts alone and the bodywork was all new to me because I have never worked with metal like this before.”

We love this bike. Made by a kid who learnt how to do it as he went along and the end result is a screamer two-stroke in a great chassis that looks stunning. We need more of this sort of thing in the motorcycle universe. There, we said it.

What do you think?