The New Black Arrow—2024 Husqvarna Svartpilen 801

The Husqvarna Svartpilen is a fun and capable little machine that has achieved a reasonable degree of popularity among riders. This year, Husky is supersizing the scrambler-inspired machine with the Svartpilen 801.

This new Black Arrow (that’s what Svartpilen stands for) is the largest-displacement naked motorcycle in Husqvarna’s catalog. It aims to be a powerful, well-performing middleweight street bike for adventurous road warriors.

The 2024 Svartpilen 801 draws its power from a 799cc liquid-cooled parallel-twin DOHC engine. The powerplant, producing a claimed 104 ponies, is mated to a six-speed transmission with an anti-hopping assist and slipper clutch and a standard up/down quickshifter.

You get three standard ride modes with the bike, including Street, Rain, and Sport. There’s also an optional Dynamic Mode, which adds 10 levels of slip adjustment and five levels of anti-wheelie control.

The engine is fairly light, weighing only 114.6 pounds (without any liquids in it). Together with the tubular steel frame, it brings the Svartpilen’s total dry weight to just under 400 pounds. Add a few pounds on top of that for the gas, oil, and other vital fluids.

To smooth out the bumps in the pavement, we have an adjustable WP Apex fork with 5.5 inches of travel. In the rear lives a WP Apex shock with 5.9 inches of travel.

Braking power stems from a J.Juan brake system, featuring two radially-mounted four-piston calipers gripping a 300mm disc up front and a single two-piston floating caliper and a 240mm disc in the rear. The brakes feature cornering-ABS from Bosch, and there’s a Supermoto ABS mode for seasoned riders who want to disengage rear-wheel ABS.

The Svartpilen has a five-inch TFT screen that features Bluetooth connectivity as standard through the Ride Husqvarna Motorcycles app. The display and backlit handlebar buttons control the bike’s electronics suite, including traction control and ABS adjustments in addition to the aforementioned Dynamic features.

In the looks department, the Svartpilen 801 has a stripped-down, minimalistic design that’s decidedly modern yet still hits the key points to evoke that classic scrambler feel. Your mileage may naturally vary, but the bike makes for quite a handsome sight on the street. The only offered color option is a stylishly dark black-gray scheme.

The 2024 Husqvarna Svartpilen 801 will be available from June 2024 at an MSRP of $10,899.