Rennie Scaysbrook | March 1, 2016
Hustling the H2 at speed. This is grand sportbiking at its best.
Photography by Kit Palmer
In the land of Kawasaki, one Ninja stands above all others
It’s a flutter; a high-pitched squeal that serves a warning: things are about to get serious. You’re in the danger zone. Hold on.
Coercing the Kawasaki Ninja H2 into emitting this war cry is dangerous practice, like poking a rattlesnake with a stick of dynamite.
This man-made contradiction of all things sensible exists on a super-sized diet of compressed atmosphere. Great chunks of life-giving oxygen enters the supercharger from the left side of the front cowling and is forced down the intake at up to 100 meters per second, creating a destructive but ultimately controlled force that vaults you into your near future at incredible velocity.
Ah, velocity. A subjective topic if ever there was one. What’s fast to me may not be fast to you, as our unrelated brains process the art of moving distinctly to each other. That’s one of the marvelous things about being human: each person sees the world differently, interpreting it in their own individual way.
Yet as I click up through the gearbox on this supercharged silver bullet, throttle wound back hard, I am convinced this is a machine even those with Top Fuel dragster tolerances to velocity would have to agree is a burning definition of the word fast.
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.
It’s not that the Kawasaki Ninja H2 is going to reach a higher top speed than a ZX-10R. It’s the way in which it advances you onward that grabs you by the goolies. At 6500 rpm in third gear, 10 degrees of movement on an H2 throttle is akin to 25 on a ZX-10R. And the H2’s torque curve is so smooth, so buxom, it genuinely makes many other 1000cc sportbikes feel anemic.
These rapid sensations are purely due to the presence of the factory-fitted supercharger. Kawasaki Heavy Industries—a company that possesses a board of directors—collectively voted to fit a supercharger to a 1000cc four-stroke, inline, four-cylinder, superbike engine and sell it to you and me.
Let that sink in for a minute.
In a world gone completely mad with keeping you safe from yourself, KHI has presented you with a proposition. For $26,000, you can acquire what is, by almost any measure, the single fastest form of transportation available on the road today. A Kawasaki H2 will positively vaporize all but the highest specification of supercar, and make burgers out of most bikes, too.
Gunning the throttle on an H2 is pure sex. The faster you go, the louder the flutter. And much like the mattress mash up, the faster you go, the faster you want to go.
The receptors in your brain open. Serotonin floods your system. It’s an orgasm of speed and sound and liquefying peripherals. There’s a personal connection to the experience, one very few machines, let alone motorcycles, can manage.
From the rider’s eye it looks like you’re riding a shark. The reflective silver, covering every aspect of the H2’s shell, reminds you of the exclusivity of the experience—the Kawasaki River Mark adorning the snout, awarded to only the most revered of KHI projects, reinforces it.
The Kawasaki River Mark dates back to company founder Shozo Kawasaki’s shipping business in the 1870s. Kawasaki would fly the symbol from his fleet, a symbol that was later adopted by Kawasaki Heavy Industries expressing the company’s technology, originality and innovation.
As does the chassis. This is one of very few Kawasakis to utilize a steel trellis frame. Painted in lurid sparkling lime green, it has two objectives in mind: The first is to minimize weight; the second is to show off a supercharger that would normally be hiding behind a traditional aluminum twin-spar design.
The H2 is as much as visual statement as a performance one.
The Beast. Nothing on the road looks like an H2.
This uniqueness descends across different aspects of the machine. The digital dash lights up the rev counter at the specific engine speed you are traveling—all numbers above the rpm you’re in remain black, and only when you have the motor spinning at the correct speed do the numbers flash up in red. The mirror stems look like they’ve been fashioned out of a Japanese Katana, with thin, wide, sharp edges. The five-spoke rear wheel, crafted from standard-grade cast aluminum, looks anything but. And no Kawasaki sportbike utilizes a single-sided swingarm. The H2 and its track-only brother, the H2R, do.
Massive mirror stalks look impressive.
The deep seat, with its high-flanked sides and taller back, is designed to lock you in place the same as a racecar bucket seat would. If you’re too tall, there’s no helping you fit. And there are no provisions for passengers. A ninja travels alone, as you will do on an H2.
The seat is extremely deep and quite comfortable for long rides.
When was the last time you saw a rear wheel that looked that good on a Japanese machine?
It’s not perfect. The throttle response from fully closed at low speed is like firing a hand cannon, and the gearbox can be a touch on the harsh side if the engine is not spinning north of 4000 rpm. But, who cares? These concerns matter little, as riding the H2 as fast as you can get away with feels like a God-given right, and these issues only surface when riding slow. It feels entirely reasonable to let the H2 roar past cars full of screaming children, although I feel I would have a hard time persuading a police officer otherwise.
The word says it all. Check out the incredible green paint.
Part of what makes the H2 so next-level fast is the fact it is perfectly happy to tour at 100 mph without transmitting every bump and grind into the rider’s spine. Yes it’s a Supersport-riding position, which is in itself a compromise for the human form, but the H2 cruises with such poise it feels slow, until you look at the number flashing up on the dash. In automotive terms, this is the two-wheeled equivalent of a Bugatti Veyron—a technical tour de force that will make no money for its creators, but kickstart a legend worth far more.
As a road machine, nothing will get near an H2. As a track machine, a 600cc supersport will beat it around any racetrack that isn’t a quarter-mile drag strip. This is because the H2 is a large, relatively heavy motorcycle, the suspension damping plush and the entire machine intolerant of a rough-riding style. It will wallow and buck like a bull when thrown hard into corners; however, if you channel your inner Tetsuya Harada, you and the H2 will become firm friends.
Drag race an H2 and this is most likely what you’ll see.
It’s not a supersport bike and takes a patient riding style to keep everything smooth.
To think of the H2 as anything but a roadbike is to entirely miss the point of the exercise. This is the granddaddy of road sportbikes, much like the ZZ-R1100 was in the early 1990s and the legendary, first-generation H2R of the 1970s before that. As such, the rider is cossetted in enough comfort that he won’t have his knees creased to unhealthy angles, with enough blood flow to allow for longer days in the saddle that could be reasonably expected. Conversely, the H2 makes a surprisingly good commuter, if a 200-odd horsepower machine could ever be considered such. Take the abrupt throttle out of the equation and you could potentially ride the H2 around for the rest of your life and never see north of 60 mph. However, you’d be doing motorcycling, not only yourself, a thorough disservice and you should probably re-evaluate why you own such a fire-breather in the first place.
It’s a big bike but surprisingly nimble for its size. The suspension is not ideal for track riding, however.
The H2 has shot near to the very top of motorcycles I’d love to own, not because it’s fast, or because it’s got shiny silver to blind for days, or because I know only a few people will ever get to experience the fun of the flutter. It’s because this is a motorcycle overflowing with a quality that is so difficult to manufacture—personality. This is a motorcycle whose presence cannot be denied. People who have no idea there’s a supercharger bolted to the engine stop and stare at the H2; riders follow you around just to hear it; and every time I thumbed that starter during my week with an H2, I got that guilty, lusty feeling in my loins only a certain few bikes I’ve ever ridden—all of which I could never possibly afford—gave me.
And it’s moments like these that make me love motorcycling.
Against The Best
So just what kind of power and torque does the Kawasaki Ninja H2 make when compared to every 1000cc superbike on the market today? We thought we’d match it against all the 2015 Superbikes just to see for ourselves. Now, before you say it, no, we are not comparing like for like. However, looking at the graphs still makes for interesting viewing and will probably set a few engineering minds racing as to what supercharged technology will be able to do in smaller capacity machines in the future.
In every graph, the Kawasaki’s power and torque lines are in red and are always larger than the opponents.
Click here to see the numbers.
SPECIFICATIONS: 2015 Kawasaki H2
Engine: Inline, 4-cylinder, DOHC, 16-valve, supercharged
Displacement: 998cc
Bore x stroke: 76 x 55mm
Horsepower: 193 hp @ 10,850 rpm (measured)
Torque: 91.9 lb.-ft. @ 11,600 rpm (measured)
Compression ratio: 8.5:1
Transmission: Six-speed
Chassis: Tubular steel trellis
Front suspension: 43mm inverted fork, adjustable rebound and compression damping and spring preload
Rear suspension: Single shock absorber, adjustable rebound and compression damping and spring preload
Front brake: Twin 330mm discs, four-piston Brembo M50 radial calipers, ABS
Rear brake: Single 250mm disc, two-piston caliper, ABS
Front tire: 120/70 ZR17
Rear tire: 200/55 ZR17
Rake: 24.5°
Trail: 4.1 in.
Wheelbase: 57.3 in.
Seat height: 32.5 in.
Overall width: 30.3 in.
Overall length: 82.1 in.
Fuel capacity: 4.5 gal
Weight: 524 lbs. (wet, claimed).
Color: Silver
MSRP: $25,000
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.
For more Cycle News Sport Bike motorcycle reviews, click HERE.
For more Kawasaki motorcycle reviews, click HERE.
