Now You See It...

The KTM X-BO GT-XR has a long and complicated name. It looks and sounds more like the answer to a college math problem than a European supercar.

Yet, that is exactly what it is. With its Batmobile look and race car speed, for those lucky enough to see one in the wild, it’s a definite head-turner.

Which is why Brian Knight had to have one. While he is not Bruce Wayne or Lewis Hamilton, the anesthesiologist from Lawton does have an affinity for exotic cars that go fast.

So, when the opportunity arose earlier this summer and he was able to add the GT-XR to his list of supercars, he leapt at the chance. Less than two weeks after dropping more than half a million on it, Knight and his wife Kristen hauled it up to Tulsa’s Raceway Park for a night of drag racing.

“I found out the next day from Iroz Motorsports that there are some things we can do to go faster. We will give those a try and do it again. We will end up doing drag races, roll races, take it to tracks like Circuit of the Americas down in Austin,” says Knight. “That’s a track Formula 1 uses for their races.”

Knight has owned a variety of different vehicles; everything from a 1994 Twin Turbo Toyota Supra to a McLaren has sat in his driveway. But he said the KTM X-BO GT-XR is different from anything else he has owned or driven. From its fighter jet canopy to its carbon fiber body, it was designed to stand out.

“I don’t think currently there’s anything else out there that I want. I really like this car. I don’t see myself getting rid of this one for a while,” says Knight. “I think I’ll have it for a few years. You never know what’s going to come around the horizon … but currently I really like this one.”

Built by the Austrian company KTM, the street-legal race car weighs only 2,755 pounds and can go 691 miles on a single 96-liter tank. While the GT-XR can hit a top speed of 174 mph, that is still somewhat slower than other vehicles Knight has possessed. What separates it from the pack is its ability to handle turns at high speeds like a Formula 1 race car.

KTM has limited the manufacturing of the GT-XR to only 100 per year. So, with fewer than 300 currently in existence worldwide, it has become a heavily sought-after supercar for collectors with extreme tastes.

“KTM X-BOW GT-XR owners can rest assured that the super sports car remains extremely limited and an exclusive piece of machinery, with a maximum of 100 units produced per year,” said Michael Wölfling, Managing Director of KTM Sportcar GmbH, after the 100th GT-XR was built last summer.

Knight’s passion for exotic, fast cars started at an early age. Like many kids who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, the dream car was a Lamborghini.

The 1969 Lamborghini Miura is considered by many to be the world’s first supercar, while the 1986 Lamborghini Countach was plastered on the bedroom walls of young boys and grown men across the country.

“The first real car I ended up buying a couple of years after graduating from anesthesia school was a Lamborghini,” says Knight. “It took me a few years to get to it. But I got it.” He purchased a 2011 Rosso Andromeda (red) Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera. He rebuilt the twin turbo motor and took it and its 2,000 horsepower around the country racing on half-mile tracks. That was when his passion for speed was ignited.

But getting the Lambo also meant something personal to Knight.

“It felt like I had made it,” Knight says of the accomplishment. “I think I made a post on Facebook of, ‘This wasn’t just a car for me, but it was a car for my parents who helped support me when I needed money when I was in anesthesia school.’ They never made a lot of money. And yet if I needed something to get through school, they made it happen. I realized that it took a lot of people to help me get to where I was. And so it was like a success thing that made me feel like this is for everybody.”

Having obtained the dream car at an early age, it didn’t take long for Knight’s eye to start to wander. He also got tired of bumping his head on the roof when arranging his 6-foot-5 frame inside the car.

Knight ended up selling the Lamborghini and took a break from his exotic car obsession for a couple of years, until he purchased a 2021 McLaren 765LT.

The McLaren lasted a year before Knight started plotting on how to make the X-BO GT-XR his newest conquest in early 2025.

“I was looking around for other options. I really liked the McLaren. It was really quick, but it was missing some fields, like the sound and—it just was missing something,” Knight explains. “I started looking around, saw the KTM, and loved the way it looks.”

As someone used to V10s and Twin Turbo V8s, Knight was initially dissuaded by the GT-XR’s 2.5-liter, five-cylinder Audi RS3 engine, which “only” produces 500 horsepower. While that is good enough to go from 0 to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds, Knight still wanted more power.

But after finding out he could add 1,300 horsepower to the motor without any issues, Knight was locked in.

“Now, I’m not worried about the power level, and I love the way the car looks,” Knight says. “Then it just became more real and I started trying to work on building one. I was already in the process of going through KTM directly and having one built. I was picking the colors.”

KTM doesn’t mass-produce its vehicles. It work with its customers to individually build their perfect car. So, every car that rolls out of the plant in Graz, Austria, is in many ways one-of-one.

“Allowing our customers to craft their very own super sports car was one of the best decisions we ever made,” stated Wölfling. “More than 90% of KTM X-BOW GT-XR drivers have configured their model as a one-of-a-kind. In other words, almost every single car that rolls off the production line is a unique specimen.”

Knight’s original plan was for his GT-XR to have a transparent purple that would allow the carbon fiber pattern underneath the paint to be seen. Once all the details were out of the way and the bank had approved the finances, he was just waiting to put up the down payment.

"I’ve told my kids since they were young, people’s feelings matter more to me than material objects. So, if you can spread happiness and joy and share that with other people, do it.” –Brian Knight

But that was when things went off course.

The initial price was just over $560,000. But when President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs were introduced, it raised the total to more than $700,000. That was a price Knight was unwilling to pay.

“I make good money, but I don’t make $140,000 ‘throw away for no reason’ kind of money,” Knight says. “I’m still a stingy person. I'm not just going to throw away money for no reason. I’ll just wait. That’s when this other one became available.”

Knight got word that a GT-XR was going to be put up for sale after a businessman in Chicago fell on hard times and needed money fast.

Even though the Chicago car was fully stocked with all the trims and premium accessories and had only 112 kilometers (69 miles) on the odometer, Knight’s offer of $535,000 was accepted. After less than an hour and a half of negotiating, he became the owner of just the 215th GT-XR in the world.

The car was delivered in mid-August while Knight was in Kansas working. When he got back to Lawton, he took it to the gas station that night. By the time he got home, photos of his new ride had already been posted on various Facebook pages.

Besides the look and agility that the gloss carbon fiber (black) GT-XR offers, what sold Knight on the car was its exclusiveness. While there are only eight in the United States, he now has the only one in the Central Time Zone. That includes Texas, which surprised him.

Despite its uniqueness, Knight doesn’t plan to keep it out of public view. While it’s not his everyday car, he won’t be afraid to take it for a spin around town.

A few days after the GT-XR was delivered, Knight drove it to the top of Mount Scott to get some photos as the sun set. A crowd quickly surrounded the vehicle, wanting to gawk, ask questions and take photos with it. A graduating senior from Cache was lucky enough to be up there at the same time and was able to get some senior photos posing with it, and a father asked if he could get photos with his young son sitting in it. Knight happily obliged.

“I’ve told my kids (Sofia and Cal) since they were young, people’s feelings matter more to me than material objects,” Knight says. “So, if you can spread like happiness and joy and share that with other people, do it. If I had the money to buy a $3 billion car, I would still do it. I don’t care. A car is just a car.”