KAWASAKI Z1000SX
I’ve got a lot of time for Kawasaki’s ‘Z’ range, particularly the Z1000. With their big, rev happy engines, they’re a bike that’ll put a smile on your face, but they’re hardly packed with all the mod cons. And the Z1000SX is no exception to that rule. At £10,299 it’s the cheapest of the three on our little trip and it doesn’t take many miles in the saddle to get an idea of why that might be
– no shifter or blipper, no cruise control, no heated grips, a dashboard that would have looked at home on a bike 15 years it’s senior – it certainly didn’t feel like a premium motorbike as far as 2019 standards go; but I think it’s price tag reflects that.
And whilst we are talking about looks, I ought to address the elephant in the room
– that sky blue paint job on the Z. I know you could argue that looks are subjective, but I mean, come on, that pasty, dull blue just doesn’t work. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d sooner have a green one. Colour scheme aside, I think the Kwak looked like a bit of a weapon; it was big and chunky and looked as though it meant business.
Chunky though it was, it felt like a bike that any sized rider ought to be reasonably comfortable on. Its low seat/high handlebar configuration meant sore wrist syndrome wasn’t something I needed to worry about, which was really nice, but arse ache didn’t take many miles to set in. The shape of the seat is lovely, I just think it’s a touch too hard, and when we’d munched a load of motorway miles to get down to the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkstone, I was ready to park the thing up and reinstate some feeling into my buttocks.
After a coffee and a cake in the Flexiplus lounge it was time for our 20-minute train ride sur La Manche (under The Channel – I knew that French GCSE would come in handy). For the benefit of those who have never been on the Eurotunnel with a bike I’ll explain how it works – you ride your bike on a train, and park it. That’s it. No straps, no bugger all. The Yam and the KTM seemed more than happy, rocking gently to and fro as the train choo choo-ed through its tunnel, but the Kawasaki was frightening to watch. I didn’t dare let go of it, for fear or it toppling over and domino-ing a dozen or so other bikes whilst it was at it. Perhaps it was a mixture of the mega-soft suspension and the geometrics of its side stand lean angle, I’m not sure, but every lump or bump the train found, the big blue beast seemed to get closer and closer to overbalancing. Thankfully though, it managed to stay on two wheels.
When we arrived in Calais unscathed, it was straight to the wine shop to get stocked up, good and proper. It didn’t take long to find a wine warehouse and before you could ‘Frodo is a piss-head’, we had our trolley ladened up with lager and both types of wine. (Not everybody knows this, but there are in fact only two different types of wine – nice wine and horrible wine. We made sure we had a good selection of both.)
How much booze was the Kawasaki going to hold, we wondered? I had high hopes for the Kwack’s big panniers, visually they seemed way bigger than those on the other two bikes and when we opened them up, we were pleased to see a pannier-shaped zip-up bag, which made loading the loot mega easy.
We rammed the bags up with beer, getting 24 stubby lagers in each, slotted them in the panniers, and there was still room for four full-size wine bottles in each, plus one of them bags that you get inside those three-litre wine ‘boxes’. It came to 27.44 litres of booze, all in all, which we didn’t think was a bad haul.
Being careful not to smash our tasty cargo, we had a gentle ride to the B&B to unload our
wares before heading out to explore northern France. We found some cracking roads, and although the Kawasaki’s soft suspension gave the bike a bit of a sluggish feel, when I really tried to give it the beans, I had a proper blast hightailing round on it. I quickly forgot about the weak colour scheme and the fact that the dash is a bit pants – who really cares about that when you are bouncing a 1000cc sports tourer off its limiter? Not me! In fact, the more I rode the Z1000SX, the more I came to appreciate exactly what it was all about.
After a while, the lack of electronic aids wasn’t taking anything away from the riding experience, if anything it was adding to it – it gave the SX a rawness that all too many of today’s modern bikes lack. And as much as I like those unnecessary little niceties, such as cruise control and quickshifters, I know plenty of folk that wouldn’t thank you for it.
Granted, those kind of people are my dad’s age (50 something), but that is probably the kind of person who would buy a bike like this. And do you know what, I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
I challenge you to find something this fast, this comfy and capable of carrying 27 litres of duty-free for less than £10,299.
For a bit more cash than the Kawasaki would set you back, you could have an MT-10 TE. For the extra dough, you get a bit more tech than you would on the Kawasaki, and a shed load more attitude. Now, having one as a long termer, I’ve done a lot of miles on an MT-10 SP this year, so I’m very familiar with the non-touring version. In fact, when I say familiar, what I actually mean is in love. It’s a motorbike that does almost everything, and is especially good at making you grin, and that’s why I think I love it so much. So what’s the difference between a normal MT-10 and this, the Tourer Edition? Well, not a great deal, if truth be known. A standard MT-10 is £11,799, but for another £850 (£12,649), you get a pair of soft paniers, a GPS mount, a high screen, some hand guards and a ‘comfort’ seat. It’s hardly transformational, rather just a handful of parts from Yamaha’s Genuine Options catalogue, but what do you expect for £850?
The dash on the TE is the same as the item on the standard MT (rather than the
SP), so it’s a bit bland, but it has all the same functionality of the posh one (apart from being able to adjust the electronic suspension, which this bike doesn’t have). The comfort seat is exactly that, and all else is pretty cushty when you jump aboard the TE. In fact, its more than cushty – about half-a-mile into my ride on the MT, I felt the almost insatiable urge to hoist the front wheel in the air and pop a ridiculously long wheelie and I could tell the bike would have happily obliged; obviously I didn’t do that, as that kind of thing would probably constitute ‘dangerous riding’ or ‘riding without due care and attention’ or some other nonsense, made up offence. But I imagine that if I had done a huge stand-up wheelie past little Carlos, I probably would have been able to hear him laughing through the Cardo intercoms we were using. But there really is no way of knowing.
It’s probably fair to say that the MT looks the least like a touring bike, probably in part down to the size of its saddle bags. They’re not huge, so when we got to the
Calais wine shop, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of bevvy holdage. The Yam didn’t do terribly, but its soft paniers were a bit of a nightmare to load, with the zip having to be undone almost all the way round to get the cases open. We still managed to fit 24 stubby beers and a couple of bottles of wine in each though, so it wasn’t a bad haul. That said, it was rather rudely filled and had we not taken the utmost care after loading the thing up, I have no doubt in my mind that we would have arrived at our B&B to find a pair or paniers full of loose beer and broken glass. Thankfully we arrived fully beero intacta.
When we got on the naughty French back roads the MT came into its own. Don’t get me wrong, it was comfortable, but it didn’t feel like a touring bike at all. It felt like a proper super naked that wanted to do daft things and take you to daft places. The torque that the engine puts out is bonkers. In fact, it’s quite comical really. There are occasions though, where that mass of grunt makes the MT a bit of a handful to ride. In power mode one, going from a closed throttle to an open throttle can feel a little jerky and aggressive. I didn’t mind it, but after jumping off the Kawasaki, it took a bit of getting used to. Switching to mode two does soften that issue a little bit, but I think it’s a small price to pay for power that feels so raw and exciting.
As usual on a Yamaha, the brakes didn’t win any prizes and as soon as we started to push the envelope, the ABS started sticking its oar in, but in all fairness, that was only when we were asking more of the bike than most people ever would. When ridden the way it was probably intended to be, the brakes (and to be fair, the ABS) were more than adequate. In fact, all the electronics were good on the MT. The wheelie control and TC both work well, the shifter, apart from feeling a little twang-y, is more than acceptable, and the cruise control is brilliant (I never thought I’d hear myself saying that about a motorbike).
The only major fault we had with the TE was the fact that it drank so much bloody fuel. Well, that coupled with the fact that it used the same 17-litre fuel tank as the standard, non-touring model, meant we were stopping for fuel way before the Kwack or the KTM needed to.
If you’re serious about touring and you’re heading off with a bunch of lads who are ready to put some big mileage stints in, then you might start becoming a bit of a nuisance on your MT-10 TE. But it will do 120-plus miles on a tank and we reckon that’s enough for anyone so the TE definitely gets our vote; me and Frodo had a proper giggle on it.