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Brian Neale
A cold, wet look at new Ninja


Published March 28, 2004


Each winter I anticipate my first ride of the year as if it were a favorite holiday. I picture myself railing my trusty machine around curvy country roads on a rare, glorious pre-spring day, blowing the cobwebs off my brain and riding skills.

Of course this being Chicago, it never happens this way. First Ride is typically overcast, cold and ruined by some form of precipitation. Last year, for instance, I picked my way down seven miles of bus-rutted Western Avenue in a hard, sudden snow shower, hoping to make the garage before the salt trucks started throwing corrosives.

But this year I had an ace up my sleeve that practically guaranteed a great First Ride--the opportunity to hop aboard Kawasaki's all-new Ninja ZX-10R sportbike at its U.S. headquarters in Irvine, Calif.

Cycle magazines had published a few initial reports from the ZX-10Rs racetrack press intro, and the story line was clear:

After years of watching its last-generation ZX-9R lag the ever-evolving competition, Kawasaki had jumped back into the Superbike class fray with a hard-charging, 1-liter race bike engineered to reset the parameters for "small" and "light."

Great for the track, in other words, but would it be a worthy street steed for my First Ride? It was the place to find out, a land of roller-coaster roads where even giant SUVs pull over to let faster thrill-seekers pass.

The next morning I confirmed the small/light angle of ZX-10R's story at the Kawasaki garage.

I couldn't discern a difference in size or weight when hopping between the 10R and the company's 600-cc sportbike, the Ninja ZX-6RR. Spec sheet comparisons reveal a 375-pounds claimed dry weight for the big Ninja--just 20 pounds heavier than its little brother.

A Kawasaki rep ran down the Ninja's techno-trickery, the most obvious being radially mounted brake calipers biting on "petal-cut" rotors. The rotor design, which saves weight while increasing surface area for better cooling, creates a silhouette like a sunflower.

Behind the bodywork lies an engine designed to be more compact yet more powerful than its predecessors. The fuel-injected inline 4, over-square with a 76x55-mm bore and stroke, boasts a 13,000 r.p.m. redline. Kawasaki says that with a ram-air induction system, the 16-valve, dual-overhead cam engine is capable of 184 horsepower at the crank in top gear.

The motor is mated to a 6-speed, close-ratio transmission via a slipper clutch with back-torque limiter. A nod to the bike's racing aspirations, this setup disengages the clutch under high-r.p.m. braking and deceleration to keep the rear wheel from hopping.

Other racer niceties include a programmable shift light and a thumb-activated lap timer. Even the exhaust is exotic: Lightweight titanium with a special valve that constricts flow at low r.p.m. to optimize performance.

This was going to be fun.

Our foursome rolled out of the garage to overcast skies and sub-normal temperatures in the high 40s. The streets were cold, damp and puddle-pocked after a hard early morning rain.

We jumped onto a 10-lane freeway for a quick jaunt to San Juan Capistrano, the gateway to Ortega Highway, a 28-mile stretch of sportbike heaven.

Keeping up with traffic meant doing about 80, and the engine felt like it was straining against a tight leash, itching to exploit its powerband and flatten my eyeballs on its way to video-game speeds. That's when I realized I was still in third gear.

I got the sense I could twist the throttle and rocket past a semi with my front wheel in the air, if I were as crazy as this bike. Instead, I up-shifted three times, and the engine settled into a 3,500-r.p.m. drone. Yet it still felt quick and responsive, with plenty of power on tap for passing anything on four wheels.

I soon found my only complaint about the 10R--freeway manners. On some sections of grooved pavement, the bike would take on a rapid-fire rocking horse rhythm that set my head bobbing. Then the pavement would change, and the ride would become tolerable.

It's likely my ride could have been improved by dialing back the suspension damping.

I was glad to get off the slab onto the smooth Ortega Highway. As the temperature dropped and the road got curvier, my winter rust began to make itself known. When the raindrops started to fall, I tucked behind the fairing, eased back on the throttle and worked on smoothing my ham-fisted inputs.

That's when it struck me that the all-business race bike beneath me was a reasonable street machine, too. The beast was predictable and well-behaved as we tracked over the mountains at a decent clip.

A couple of hours later, we were halfway into our 260-mile ride and heading up San Diego County's Mt. Palomar when I saw the first snowflake. Less than five minutes later, I was babying this thoroughbred at less than 10 miles per hour, struggling to see into heavy snow. Still, the bike behaved.

After a long, wet ride home and a similarly long, hot shower, I found out the weather in Chicago was 55 degrees and sunny, a perfect day for a First Ride.

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