RUST magazine: 2017 Husqvarna Special

emain unchanged. The DDS clutch has
proven battle worthy and so remains, albeit
with a lightened basket and ‘reworked’ hub.
So this motor, so much changed, so much
the same, slots into the new chassis which
itself is all-new (as detailed in our previous
section) yet also sticks faithfully to known
dimensions. So what are we looking to
evaluate here? The difference a weight
saving of two-kilos makes? The difference,
particularly, the counter balancer and new
power valve make? The difference the
hundreds of minor detail changes make?
The Ride
Always when it comes to new model
launches you want a datum – you want the
old model on hand to back-to-back with the
new. It never (ever) happens. So you have
to go on memory, which is hardly scientific,
which leaves every test open to criticism
for being subjective. How can it be anything
but that?
And yet in the case of the 2017 TE300
there really is a sense of moving the game
forward. The ride simply feels silky smooth,
almost like riding a mild-tune four-stroke, for
the TE300 purrs along and in the whooped
deep sand tracks in the Swedish forest its
light weight was allowing it to almost float
over the terrain. The light clutch, the slick