2020 KAWASAKI ZX-10RR
The avid World Superbike fans amongst you will likely rank the Kawasaki ZX-10RR as one of the best litre sportsbikes money can buy, and understandably so, thanks to Jonathan Rea taking five WSBK titles on the bounce on said green machine. As a race bike they are phenomenal (look what Dean Harrison can do on his at the Isle of Man TT) but on the road, in standard trim, the ZX-10 isn’t the chart topper that it once was.
First of all, if you are going to own one of these things, you’re going to have to like green. Because it’s not just green, it’s very green. When I first clapped eyes on the Kwacker, in its full Kawasaki Green livery, a little bit of sick came up – it wasn’t loads and I managed to swallow it back down without pulling too much of a face – but the acrid taste certainly outstayed its welcome. It’s just a bit too green.
To make up for the colour scheme, Kawasaki cheekily sent us a bike with a really trick AIM dashboard. If you ask me, it was a bit of an admission of guilt that the ZX-10 is ready for a new dash as standard, instead of the terribly old-fashioned thing
that the stock bike comes with; it’s barely changed in nine years and looks very tired. This thing though, was properly cool – they are £995 from MSS Performance and not only look a ton smarter than the standard dash, the menus are way more intuitive and it acts as a GPS data logger and lap timer too, logging everything that the ECU monitors, like speed, revs, lean angle etc., so you can review it later on. We think it’s about time Kawasaki started putting something similar on ZX-10s as standard – but in all fairness, if you bought a standard ZX-10R and spent a grand on one of these, you’d have the trickest dash going!
If, like me, you are reasonably long of limb, you’d be more than at home when you chuck your leg over the big Kawasaki. It’s long and very spacious, and probably feels the least like a race bike, body-position-wise, of all the models in this test. The seat is lovely and soft and everything felt just right to me and I looked forward to a lovely comfortable ride on the road. That was until I had a little bounce on it and realised how track-oriented the stiffly sprung Showa suspension felt – but I’d be lying if I said that’d put me off.
It took about three or four metres’ worth of riding to get acquainted with the Kawasaki, although it took a bit longer to get the thing up to the naughty end of the revs, such is the tallness of first gear and the lacklustre nature of the engine’s mid-range. There are 14,800 revs to play with but unless you are up in the top five thousand of them, you won’t be moving forward with a massive amount of urgency. But when you do get the 1000cc lump spinning, by golly it makes you smile as the mediocre midrange turns into a terrifyingly fast top end. The more revs I threw at the thing, the better it got, and once I learned what the motor wanted, it became an extra-exciting bike to ride. You just need to rev the thing. The problem with that, is that to make the bike rev you’ve got to be really tramping on and I found it all too easy to be at the wrong side of the speed limit on the ’Ten.
And that isn’t helped by the Jolly Green Giant first gear either. You can do more than 100mph in first, which is all good and well on a fast-flowing race track but on the road, you’d barely be in the sweet spot of the engine before you were breaking the law. In fact, it goes that fast in bottom gear that you could quite easily leave the thing in first all the time on the road, but that wouldn’t give you the chance to play with the absolutely brilliant shifter and blipper.
Upshifts and downshifts were seamless and pretty entertaining; when you had the engine singing, blipping down the box sounded nothing short of orgasmic and I couldn’t get enough of it.
I was changing gear just for the fun of it, half the time.
The wheelie and traction control systems were very serviceable and I actually got on pretty well with them. Although you can feel the TC kicking in from time to time, it wasn’t too restrictive on the road in the lowest setting. And if you decide you are ready for some proper fun, then the TC is dead easy to disable too, which is handy.
As was expected, the stiff suspension made bumpy roads a bit of a hardship and what had been a comfortable bike soon started bouncing me around all over the shop, but it came into its own in the faster, smoother stuff. The ’Ten felt totally planted and flowed round anything I could throw at it with very little protest.
When the going got really twisty and tight, the big Ninja did feel a bit long and took a bit more effort than I’d have liked to get it from one knee-down to the other; once in the turn it was as surefooted as anything on the test.
I loved riding the Kawasaki, but it took me a few miles on it to realise how to get the most out of it. The ZX-10RR can deliver an exciting ride, but you’ve got to hang the proverbial bag out a little bit (and probably break the law, if you’re riding on the road) if that’s what you’re after. If you don’t want an exciting ride, it will gladly get you from A to B in a reasonable amount of comfort and at a good pace. It’s a good bike and I really liked it, but as for whether it’s £21,199 good… well I’m not so sure.
You’d have to really like green.
THE MORE REVS I THREW AT THE THING, THE BETTER IT GOT, AND ONCE I LEARNED WHAT THE MOTOR WANTED, IT BECAME AN EXTRA-EXCITING BIKE TO RIDE