At EICMA 2022, a new Chinese motorcycle manufacturer by the name of Kove made its presence felt. Not long after, the brand started releasing teasers of its new models, one of which, the 400RR, was an inline-four-powered sportbike. Now, exactly half-a-year later, the sportbike is ready to go into global production, but not without a few last-minute changes to the spec sheet.
On the one hand, the upcoming sportbike from Kove has been given a name change. It'll now be called the 450RR, and we'll get into the details of as to why in a little bit. That said, from a styling perspective, it seems that Kove has dialed down the aggressiveness of the bike, giving it a more conventional appearance. It's still very much a fully faired machine, but it does away with some of the more outlandish features found on the 400RR. That said, it still gets winglets, a bubble windscreen, clip-on bars, and rather aggressive rearsets. At the end of the day, it can't be denied that it sort of looks like a Ducati Panigale clone.
Up next, we have the engine. If in 2022, the bike unveiled was equipped with a 399cc, liquid-cooled, inline-four engine, the production model is anticipated to be rocking a bigger 443cc four-banger. Subsequently, power output has been raised to 70.9 horsepower at 13,000 rpm, and torque output is set at 28 pound-feet of torque at 10,500 rpm. If you're thinking that these performance figures seem to be in Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4RR territory, you'd be absolutely right. Should the 450RR make it to production, it'll be the only other inline-four powered sportbike of this displacement in the market.
At present, Kove's operations are restricted maintly to China, with a few models making their way to neighboring countries under different branding. That being said, a bike as special as the 450RR – on paper, at least – certainly deserves a shot at the global market. Kove did previously make announcements that it had already opened its doors in Italy, with the rest of Europe in its crosshairs.
