Hot Knife

Six years in the making TVS' streetfighter based on the RR 310 is finally here. It's armed to the teeth with segment and world-first features, it gets a slightly more powerful engine, shorter gearing and has its sights set on the Austrian on the horizon, we tell you how it fares

- Dipayan Dutta

The purpose is the first thing that comes to the product team's mind when they lay the foundation for a new motorcycle. A fairly easy task when the purpose itself is unidirectional. An adventure bike needs to go off-road and be comfortable on the highway. A supersport needs to be good on the track. But a streetfighter? Well, that's a little more complicated. You see a streetfighter, in my opinion, needs to do it all. It's the kind of bike you'd ride to work every day and on the weekend slap on some soft luggage, ride down to your nearest race track for a Sunday track day drag knees and be back on Monday morning. And it needs to do all of it moderately well. If not with distinguished ease. It probably explains why it took TVS six years from the launch of the RR 310 to bring in the RTR 310, but now that it's here one thing is clear TVS is out for blood, and that in a segment that will include the 2024 KTM 390 Duke. It is not something you do by stripping the fairing and adding high rise bars. TVS may have stripped the RR 310 of its fairing, but they've done it with such a sense of individuality that aside from the familiar-looking trellis cradle (that's now painted in white) you would be hard-pressed to tell the lineage. The first thing that's going to catch your eye is the stance of the motorcycle. The forward-leaning stance is set in motion by the sharp angular LED headlamp placed just under the gold USD forks, and then as eyes trace along the body, sinewed bodywork in clean angular lines lead upward. There's an angular but still visually imposing tank with sharp tank extensions that angle downwards in line with the stance of the RTR 310. The tail section is minimal and clean, thanks to the fact that the number plate is now housed on the tyre hugger which brings the focus onto the LED tail light that sits flush on the tail section. Another detail I like and something that not everyone caught on the RTR was the introduction of a revised chassis with an aluminium s