#ninja

In spite of protestations from various peanut gallery season-ticket holders who claim disinterest, our mostly annual Superbike Comparison remains MO’s single biggest deal of the year when it comes to clicks and comments. Apparently, many people who don’t have much interest in owning any of these motorcycles are still really interested in riding them vicariously, which is fine by the MO staff; we’re willing to make the sacrifice, for a few weeks anyway. Whether you lust after one or not, it only makes sense to be interested in them, since this is where the new performance stuff turns up first, as motorcycles, like everything else, grow more sophisticated.

From the unchained environment of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where performance is the sole consideration for victory in our 2015 Six-Way Superbike Track Shootout, we move to the confines of public roadways to determine which superbike renders the best street-legal exhibition. As tight as our track test results were, the street shootout was just as close with a half-percent separating second from first place. If the MO offices were located in Florida, I’d demand a recount.

Rejoice, sportbike fans, as 2015 is bound to go down as the year of the liter-class superbike. After riding this latest crop of superbikes at their individual intros, your respective MO editors all came back gushing, proclaiming the bike they just finished riding is a viable contender for top honors in the class. Of course, with statements like that, pitting them all together and settling the score was the natural thing to do. And here for you now, we bring you the epic showdown you’ve long been waiting for, pitting five all-new or significantly revised superbikes on the racetrack against the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, winner of our 2012 Japanese Literbike Shootout. Stay tuned next week for our street impressions.

In preparation of our upcoming 2015 Superbike Shootout we came across this similar gem posted a decade ago. From then to now we find similarities in the entrants as well as the editors, such as Yamaha’s R1 and Sean Alexander. In terms of performance, things have, of course, progressed far beyond what these four machines possessed – mostly in the realm of electronics. “You don’t have a 6-axis gyro, TC, slide, lift and launch control,” asks the 2015 of its predecessor. 

The idea of a Kawasaki sportbike that costs $25,000 might seem incongruous. That’s the realm of Italian exotics and, though Kawasaki ends with a vowel, it’s not a swanky European marque that commands an exotic price tag.

Last time I was at Auto Club Speedway, the MO crew was testing the three fastest streetfighters, and it was a rush to see speedometers creep past 160 mph on the banked front straightaway. This week I watched numbers rush past 175 mph on the same track, this time aboard the quickest-accelerating production vehicle on the planet, Kawasaki’s 2015 Ninja H2.

Awesome [aw–suh m] adjective: Causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear: an awesome sight.

I’ve been testing factory-supplied motorcycles for more than 20 years, and I’m proud to say only a few of the 700-odd press bikes I’ve sampled have ever been placed improperly on the ground, i.e. crashed.

The history of motorcycle engines powering other vehicles goes back a long way. Look at the original Morgan 3 Wheeler, for example. Almost a century ago, J.A.P. bike engines were plunked onto the front of a strange piece of machinery with two wheels in front and one in the back. It proved to be popular and a rather high-performing vehicle in its time. For this Top 10 list we take a look at other applications for motorcycle engines. As you can imagine with a list like this, there are a wide variety of vehicles. Some are production cars, while others are one-offs or boutique items. And yes, even though this is Motorcycle.com, I want to get behind the wheel of every single one of these! So, if you’re a rep from one of the below companies (or are simply a kind soul who owns one), give me a jingle and let’s make it happen!

This week’s video features Swedish daredevil Al the Jumper. If you’ve never heard of him, you can probably figure out his schtick just from the name. Al jumps. He’s best known for his videos showing him jumping over moving cars, but this time, Al uses his impressive leaping ability to vault over two sportbikes speeding at him at about 68 mph.

Kawasaki’s H2 street machine and H2R racebike are likely the most talked about motorcycles of 2015. Engineering a supercharger into a liter-class sportbike is a mighty technological feat, and the H2/H2R shifts the paradigm of what’s possible in a sportbike engine. The EPA-legal H2 is said to produce about 200 crankshaft horsepower, while the closed-course-only H2R claims at least 300 hp.

If you’re like us, then you must be salivating over the 2015 literbike prospects. With no less than eight new bleeding-edge sportbikes on the table from both European and Japanese marques, the bar is being raised in the quest for track domination or, in the case of the Kawasaki H2 and H2R, simply having the rider experience intense acceleration like they’ve never felt before. However, there’s an interesting trend in the method in which each manufacturer is going about upping the literbike ante. More and more, a greater emphasis is placed on technology and electronics rather than hardware. Sure, hardware isn’t being ignored, but with today’s bikes making so much power, being able to harness it effectively is of utmost importance.

One of the questions I’ve heard frequently asked about the Kawasaki Ninja H2 and H2R can be summed up with one word: Why? Why the H2R? It doesn’t fit the requirements of any international racing series. It’s not street legal. And why the H2? Isn’t it just a detuned H2R, designed not to break the European and Japanese manufacturers’ gentleman’s agreement of keeping streeting machinery to under 186 mph (300 kph)? As if a motorcycle we expect to make in the neighborhood of 200 horsepower and go right up to an expected software-limited top speed can be called detuned. That’s before we even consider the massive torque bump the supercharger should deliver.

Kawasaki is building hype around its new, and potentially groundbreaking, Ninja H2 sportbike with a series of short videos. Each one highlights a certain aspect about the bike, and last week’s third teaser video was an audible delight, as we got to hear the supercharger discharge get expelled every time the throttle was closed.

Today, Kawasaki released the second in its series of teaser videos for the much anticipated Ninja H2. Not much is revealed visually in the teaser video, but the audible notes tell a completely different story. The video starts off with a run through the gears and in it we hear the clear sound of the centrifugal supercharger’s wastegate as it regulates intake pressure.