Late last year, members of the media were invited to tour the KTM Asia Motorcycle Manufacturing Inc. (KAMMI) factory in Santa Rosa, Laguna. Adventure Cycle president and COO Dino Santos gave an informative and inspiring presentation about the growth of the plant through the years, a result of laying the groundwork for bringing in KTM way back in 2016.

Apart from being asked to refrain from taking photos/videos and to keep away from some secret rooms, we saw an assembly line of 390s, 790s, 890s, and Husqvarnas painstakingly being assembled and tested before being given the seal of approval.

Aside from that, we also got a peek at the Zero electric motorcycle production line, as KAMMI had also just recently been awarded a contract for export production.

Morale at the plant was high, and I for one was glad that my personal bike was built by fellow Filipinos.

As an owner of a 390 Adventure at the time, I was especially pleased to find out that many components were actually sourced from Philippine suppliers.

Dino and his team shared that they took the time to source local suppliers for things like electrical wiring, seats, handlebars, and whatnot in an honest effort to increase the bikes’ local content.

I had nearly 8,000km on my KTM before I sold it, experiencing zero problems except for an occasional low-rpm stall, a consequence of an ECU programmed to run too lean in order to satisfy Euro 5 emissions.

The wiring, the saddle, and the handlebar were locally produced, and the motor was hand-assembled and tested here instead of just being shipped in a box from India. I never got tired of wringing that 373cc engine out whenever I had the chance; it just felt tightly built and lived up to the brand’s “Ready to Race” slogan.

And then a bombshell hit about a few weeks later, first brought to light by my colleague Aris Ilagan with his Motochismis Facebook page: A big motorcycle brand was about to close down. Wild speculation immediately started, and though KTM officially denied it, the signs became ever more obvious as the weeks passed.

Several key marketing staff members began leaving, and then a ridiculously huge fire sale started around April with hundreds of thousands of pesos off brand-new units.

The latter was initially marketed as a one-month promo to celebrate the Ayalas Group’s 190th anniversary, but the sale went on for longer than that.

It probably didn’t sit well for customers who had bought KTMs and Husqvarnas at full price, but who could resist a deal like a P450,000 790 Adventure S (from an SRP of P748,000), or a Svartpilen 401 at P195,000 (from an SRP of P345,000)?

Buyers who had the cash came in droves, and according to my source inside the company, Adventure Cycle sold more bikes in the past six months than for any other year.

Well, yeah, if you slash the prices that much, those bikes will just fly out of showrooms. And the competitors could only scratch their heads, unable to match this kind of pricing.

Finally, the KTM Philippines Facebook page announced what everybody had been speculating all along: Adventure Cycle Philippines is closing shop, and the marketing and distribution rights are being turned over to Lucky MAPI (Motor Ace Philippines).

ACPI and KTM AG have mutually agreed to pre-terminate their importer agreements, and owners new and old will have nothing to worry about when it comes to after-sales support and service.

Why did this happen? Purely a business decision, according to my source. Plus, an educated guess on my part.

Despite the substantial investment (financial and emotional) that the Ayala Group (specifically ACMobility, their two- and four-wheel business arm) had put into the brand, the big bike market is still very small in the Philippines—and also extremely competitive. A big bike is pretty much a luxury item, a want rather than a need.

The average big bike costs as much as a nice used car, and is most likely not the owner’s only vehicle in the garage. The leading big bike brand in the Philippines is BMW Motorrad, yet even it has a tough time moving so many bikes year after year despite aggressive marketing and a solid customer base.

KTM caters to a very defined market compared to BMW: people who love to ride the nuts off all the time and are willing to endure the discomfort and the alien styling. It does have small-displacement bikes like the 200 Duke and the Husqvarna Svartpilen/Vitpilen 201, but as much fun as these are to ride, they’re manual-transmission bikes in a market that can’t get enough of CVT-equipped scooters.

So, with low sales volume not enough to justify all the associated costs of running a brand, Ayala decided to give it up and shift all its attention to emerging brands like Gogoro and BYD. It makes good business sense. Gogoro is electrified scooters with swappable batteries, and BYD is only the best-selling EV brand in the whole world.

I can only imagine how heartbreaking this must be for the staff of Adventure Cycle Philippines, with September 30 being their last day. According to my source, 29 staffers were still onboard as of press time.

But Ayala hasn’t simply dropped them like a hot potato. Employees were given severance and early retirement packages, with HR actively working to find them work opportunities within the Ayala Group. They’ll still have to apply and go through the hiring process again, but they hold the advantage of having experience working in a very tough marketplace.

Being a separate business, the KAMMI plant will still produce KTMs and Husqvarnas for the new distributor. In theory, all those valuable workers, engineers, and mechanics will have nothing to worry about as long as the orders keep coming in.

As for Lucky MAPI, the company is part of the Motor Ace Philippines group, which has more than 200 branches in the Philippines and caters to a very broad customer base (from entry-level to premium).

I suspect they’ll have a challenge convincing new buyers to pick KTM after ACPI’s scorched-earth marketing, but in the long run, things will stabilize and the fire sale will just be that one time when buyers got extremely lucky.

As for ACPI, I wish the team—from Dino Santos all the way down to manong security guard who made sure I was comfortable whenever I was in for servicing—all the best in their next endeavors. ACPI did a great job building up the brand from scratch despite all the hiccups along the way, making KTM and Husqvarna among the top motorcycle brands in our market.

I am excited to see how Lucky MAPI will further grow these brands.

KTM Philippines is dead.

Long live KTM Philippines.