After building performance-oriented electric MXers for a few years, Stark Future has pivoted over towards the street-legal dual sport scene. The just-announced Stark Varg EX is a roadworthy enduro bike, although you probably aren’t going to take it very far from home base.
Who’s Stark Future?
When Alta Motors went under, Euro battery bike makers Stark arrived as sort of a spiritual successor, building high-performance MX bikes that were intended to go toe-to-toe with 450 four-strokes. Thanks to race series rulemakers, that opportunity has not been granted at this point.
We had an interview with Stark Futures designer Jack Morris on The Lowdown Podcast here.
Much of the machine is updated from its motocross ancestor. Photo: Stark
The Stark Varg EX
As soon as you introduce a dirt bike, someone somewhere is going to start asking for a street legal version, and that’s what happened with the Stark Varg series. This EX model is the result.
The Stark Varg EX is not just an MX machine with a light kit and a new 18-inch rear wheel, though. Stark says they revised most of the bike’s major components to fit it into the new enduro/street role, starting with the chassis. The steel frame is revised to provide more flex for the trails. In front and back, there is a KYB fork and shock with 11.8 inches of travel at each end. The rear suspension uses a linkage instead of attaching the shock directly to the swingarm, but Stark says it offers more ground clearance than competing dirt bikes.
The rear shock is fully adjustable but we haven’t seen any details on the fork, only that it’s a closed-cartridge system.
Of course, a light kit is standard, with cute little turn indicators built right into the headlight mask on Euro models (not legal in some other markets; you’ll have to put up with ugly light-on-a-stick indicators, unless you retro-fit the Euro parts). At 4,000 lumens output, Stark says its headlight greatly out-powers the competition. That’s good news, because wayyyyy too many dual sports and enduros have insufficient headlight power.
Brakes are from Brembo, with a 260 mm disc up front and two-piston caliper, and a 220 mm disc in back. The bike can be configured to have either a foot-operated rear brake or a hand-operated setup.
And then there’s the powerplant itself. It appears the motor is the same as used in the MX design, with the equivalent of 80 horsepower on tap, and pumping out 764 lb-ft of torque. That’s a lot of muscle in a 264-pound motorcycle. To keep regulators happy, Stark’s technology allows the bike to be detuned to A2-level power-to-weight ratio, and the braking regen system can also be tweaked to allow feedback to suit the user’s liking.
Also available in detuned configuration to keep it learner-legal. Photo: Stark
The Stark Varg EX runs with a 7.2 kWh battery, with honeycombed magnesium design. That’s a jump from the 6.8kWh battery in the MX machine, offering more range, but don’t expect to get very far from your charger. Riding at a pro-level pace, Stark says the battery will last just under 2 hours; at a fast amateur pace, just over 2 hours; and at a beginner (slow) pace, just over 4 hours. That gives you maybe 100 miles of range, give or take—and then you’ve got to recharge your battery again. That takes two hours with your bike on the charging stand feeding from a 240V supply.
Interested? Asking price is $12,900 as far as we can tell, with delivery in March of 2025. More details here.
