Customizers work on bikes for any number of reasons, but broadly speaking, the general idea is to take any given bike and make it better. Now, of course, ‘better’ is subjective—and what’s ‘better’ for off-road purposes is usually not ‘better’ for the track. There are a whole lot of directions a bike can go in, and that’s where things usually start to get interesting—as with the KTM 1290 Paris Dakar build recently undertaken by Roland Sands Design.
The team started with a KTM 1290 Super Adventure, and the build began during covid times—which, of course, presented its own challenges. Since off-the-shelf parts weren’t yet plentiful for this bike, RSD had to reach out to some of its friends for prototypes. Luckily, with so many friends in the parts and accessories business, they were able to source what they needed to kit out what became the KTM 1290 Paris Dakar.
