Not the hottest beasts but worth the ride
A Subaru BRZ and Kawasaki Ninja 300 perfect for a car-versus-bike shootout
CAYUGA, ONT. We auto scribes do love a racetrack boondoggle. Given even the slightest provocation, we’re at the ready to rent a track, don racing booties and channel our inner Lewis Hamilton. All in the quest of journalistic investigation, of course.
In fact, the only thing we like better than a track boondoggle is a high-speed track boondoggle. After all, why subject poor, ordinary tires to racetrack abuse when you can turn really wide Pirelli PZeros — say the 305/30R20s that adorn the rear of a Lamborghini Huracán — into piles of molten rubber?
That’s why, every time you read a one of the classic car-versus-motorcycle stories — which is faster, two wheels or four? — it always involves impossibly horsepowered unobtanium like a McLaren versus a Ducati.
While these may settle the ultimate question of which is faster they are monumentally inconsequential, the talent required to drive/ride any of these beasts at their limits possessed of but a few supermen making big bucks with their lightning-fast reflexes.
Which is why when we at Driving decided to try the whole bikeversus-car thing, we took a different route. We went looking for the slowest super(ish) car/bike combo we could find. Indeed, what we were looking for was the sportiest, finest handling, most racetrack worthy representatives of both species that just happened to not have a lot of horsepower, that last qualifier making them more affordable (always a criteria to the common man) and less intimidating ( judging from the number of Ferraris that get scrapped at track days, a criteria that should be forced on more common men).
When we plugged those criteria into the Driving database, the contenders it popped out were Subaru’s sporty little BRZ and Kawasaki’s littlest Ninja, the 300. Both fit our common-man criteria to a T. Both are cheap: you can ride away with an ABS-equipped 300 Ninja for as little as $5,399, while a BRZ can be had for less than $30,000. And neither is blessed with an excess of horsepower: Subaru boasts a mere 205 hp underfoot, while the little Ninja’s 40 or so horses can barely intimidate a Volkswagen Beetle. But throw in superb handling, safety-minded anti-lock brakes and light weight for both and you have the perfect candidates for a car-versus-bike shootout for the moderately talented.
We didn’t serve up just any Subaru or Kawasaki. The BRZ, for instance, was the latest Inazuma version replete with lightweight wheels, Sachs shocks and Brembo brakes. Nor was the Kawasaki an ordinary Ninja, the Canadian distributor ponying up a 300 prepped for Canadian Superbike’s new Ninja 300 series, its sporting bona fides propped up with an Elka rear shock, a K-tech fork kit and some super sticky Dunlop Sportmaxes. Let the games begin.
As we expected, despite the massive difference in chassis dynamics between two wheels and four, the Subaru and Kawasaki were remarkably similar. Acceleration was tepid, but both were remarkably adroit at attacking Toronto Motorsports Park’s manifold tricky corners. One might counter a corner’s angular acceleration by leaning and the other by loading up its two outside tires, but the precision with which they accomplished their diametrically opposed tasks was equally precise.
For the experienced bikers, at least, two laps were all that was required before knee pucks became resolutely acclimated with Cayuga tarmac. And despite its modest power, the BRZ took to the track like a Liberal to deficits; it might be slow to accumulate — er, accelerate — but my God, was its grasp tenacious. And, as I’ve long maintained, their paucity of power — at least to we of mediocre talent — was a boon. Instead of concentrating 90 per cent of our middling talent on the massive speed of a supercar or superbike, we could devote all of our talent to the much more meaningful enterprise of getting in and out of corners. Riding in constant fear of the consequences of twisting a 200-hp motorcycle’s throttle one degree too far is not my idea of a pleasant track day.
Indeed, despite the difference in the number of wheels, it was remarkable how similar these two underappreciated sportsters were. The modified suspensions were just the right balance of stiffness (minimizing body roll in the car; preventing brake dive on the bike) and compliance (the Cayuga track is getting a little bumpy). Steering (thanks to light weight for the bike and well calibrated electric boosting for the car) was precise. Even the aforementioned lack of power was remarkably similar, both bike and car reaching about the same top speed (which we’re keeping secret lest the drama of this carversus-bike thing be reduced by lack of big numbers) at the end of Toronto Motorsport Park’s straightaway-cum-drag strip.
Even the differences were subtle. The little Kawi’s single 290-millimetre front disc brake didn’t quite have the bite of Subaru’s fourwheel discs, but it’s Elka shock had better damping.
In the end, lap times are the only way to quantify the relative speed in any vehicle comparison. And with car and bikes so incredibly equal, the competition came down to one thing: tires. The little Ninja’s Sportmax tires might have had softer rubber than the Subaru’s Michelin Primacys, but with four 215/45R17s putting rubber to road compared with the relatively skinny 140/70-17 that adorns the rear of the Kawasaki, the car still had offered the most reliable grip over Cayuga’s sometimes cantankerous tarmac.
In the end, our most reliable indicator of car-versus-bike speed, Driving contributor and former bike racer, Costa Mouzouris was about a second and a quarter quicker in the BRZ than on the Ninja.
Much more important is how much fun everyone had, this being, after all, a boondoggle.