"By August 1998 the decision was made to go with a 75-degree V-twin design, but with special emphasis on light weight and, especially, compact build. To do so, KTM decided to assume the entire R&D process themselves. They hired Claus Holweg as Project Manager for the LC8, fresh from their Austrian rivals, Rotax, There he had headed up the R&D team which had developed the freshly-launched RSV Mille engine for Aprilia "My work on the Aprilia project was at an end, but I already had many ideas I wanted to put into metal in making a Mark Two V-twin that would be even better," says Holweg. "My goal was to build the smallest, lightest and most powerful V-twin engine ever made, but at the same time to make it as safe as necessary in terms of durability. It was a very exciting engineering challenge." The LC8 engine went from a blank computer screen to its first dyno run on August 11, 1999 in exactly 12 months, A remarkable achievement, even if the first time it fired up was in total darkness, thanks to Austria's coincidental total eclipse of the sun that very same day!"
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