X-Bow Production Suspended

What?! No! This can't be happening, this can't be happening ... OK, wait, they said suspended, not 'canceled". I feel better now. If you ask me, there's far too few lightweight sportscars in this world. There's the X-Bow, the Ariel Atom the Caterham (am I missing any?), I guess you could throw in the Beck Spyder, so that makes only 4. We can't stand to have 25% of the current crop of these little guys go missing, if you ask me.

Yes, I will agree with those of you out there that the X-bow is the ugliest of the lot. It would seem that no one told the Austrians (who I always thought were good at De Stijl) that the folded paper school of body design went out with the first Bush administration. And normally, how a car looks means a lot to me (being half-Italian and all), but for a car as minimalist and "overpowered" (if there is such a thing) as the X-Bow, I'm willing to make an exception.

So what gives? Why is Austrian bike manufacturer KTM holding up the production line all of a sudden? According to LeftLaneNews, it's the shaky world economy. Saying that " ... one more performance vehicle program could be on the verge of extinction

Austria’s KTM ... X-Bow."

Drat! Let's hope it just turns out to be a suspension, and they're not killing the thing out right.

The X-Bow is one of the best performance vehicles on Earth thanks to that age old, Colin Chapman-esque belief in light weight curing many ills. That light weight and a turbocharged 2.0L engine cranking out "more than enough" grunt. And although that combination is enough to worry Porsche drivers, it's not enough to encourage people with money in this day and age.

The global economic downturn has slowed sales to a trickle, say the reports, and the supply of the X-Bow now far outstripped demand. Ergo, KTM has reportedly decided to halt production. The Austrians had originally planned to produce around 1,000 units of the of the little guy every year, but so far company’s factory in Graz has only cranked out 500 examples to date. Even worse, they've only sold 80 of those 500 units.

No official word on when production will get rolling again, but the factory isn't planning on them turning them out the doors until January 2010 at the earliest. Maybe, and this is just me, they should work on selling them in the U.S. Get some safety exceptions, and cut the price too.

I'd buy one ... if I made more money and had more garage space.

Source: LeftLaneNews. Photos from exfordy, Gaspa, daveoflogic and p_c_w.