kawasaki h2 sx hypersports se roadtest tourer
IN the many years that I have been testing bikes, I have never felt such relief to return a bike as when I handed the keys of the H2 SX back to Kawasaki. Don’t get me wrong. It is not like the H2 SX is bad or anything. It’s just that the motorcycle is bonkers.
I did not trust myself enough to ride this bike responsibly. Every ride on it involved an inner monologue with myself to take it easy. But how do you take it easy when you are riding the fastest sports tourer on the planet.
I have ridden the Kawasaki H2 around most of Malaysia and the Kawasaki H2R on track at Sepang. So I am no stranger to the loony family that this sports tourer comes from, having been acquainted with them earlier. The sales pitch for the new H2 SX states that it is a toned-down version of its hardnosed siblings, designed for touring.
However, when you bolt on a supercharger to a litre-bike and boost it to kingdom come, there is no such thing as slow.
The H2 SX makes 197hp at 11,200rpm, which is the same output as the H2. With ram air, the output is bumped up to an astounding 207hp. Many changes were made to the H2 SX to make it more civilized than its brutish siblings. This involved reducing the size of the ram-air intake, throttle bodies, cylinder head ports and exhausts header to boost flow at lower rpm.
The H2 SX’s supercharger is driven by a planetary gear train, which runs off the crankshaft and increases the impeller speed up to 9.2x the crank speed (1.15x step gear with an 8x planetary gear). However, the impeller blades have been reformed to work better at lower RPMs.
The first thing you realise when you get on the H2 SX is that the seating position is tamer compared with the aggressive perch of the H2. The seating position sits in the middle between a Kawasaki Ninja ZX10 and a GTR, sporty enough to make you feel confident when charging into corners, but without loading too much weight on your wrists. This combination makes the H2 SX just about right for a sports tourer. This is evident when I rode a distance of about 800km over three days without having much body ache.
The H2 SX’s colour TFT screen is aesthetically pleasing. It allows you to change the speedometer profiles from sports to touring.
Pretty much everything you would like to know can be shown on the screen, including your lean angle, which can be shown as bars to indicate how low you are going.
The lean angle sensor connects to a brilliant bit of improvisation in the form of three LED cornering lights on each side of the fairing that light up as you lean in to corners at 10˚, 20˚ and 30˚.
The lights light up one by one as you lean lower and illuminates progressively further into a corner.
I took the H2 SX on my usual route from Kuala Lumpur to Cameron Highlands. Leaving on a Friday afternoon, the H2 SX easily chomped the miles down. It still has the same insane acceleration as the H2, but the power is easier to manage, coming in at 4,000rpm. From there the tachometer sweeps incrementally faster as it charges for the 12,500rpm redline. In “full power” mode, the acceleration on the H2 SX is incomparable to almost anything else on the road (except, of course, the H2).
Needless to say, the H2 SX exists on a different speed plane compared with the rest of expressway traffic.
The last few thousand revs fly by so quickly that it makes it scary to ride on our crowded, and non-signalling expressways. On the PLUS highway, you begin to get a bit nervous each time the boost comes on. The H2 SX does not gain speed as much as hurtle forward with each pump of the throttle. It whooshes forward as if it had been released from a giant elastic band.
There are three power modes which you can select, namely L (Low), M (Middle) and F (Full) power.
I rode in full power mode during most of the ride, but realised it was difficult to modulate my throttle hand to give accurate input on the long sweeping corners.
This is where the sheer power of the H2 SX makes it almost too much to handle. Unlike run of the mill litrebikes, which can be wringed out to full throttle on the long sweepers on the PLUS highway, the H2 SX still has reserves of throttle on these corners. You need to have pinpoint accuracy with the throttle hand to avoid dialling in too much gas and upsetting the bike midcorner. What will make it worse are the undulations and dips on the highway.
This can be remedied by selecting “low power” mode, which tames the riding experience, but then this negates the whole point of riding the most powerful sports tourer in existence.
I decided to take the old Tapah route instead of the Simpang Pulai route, and in the pitch darkness of the forest route the lean-sensor lights worked as advertised.
The H2 SX bounced over the bad road surfaces without incident, although it was a chore to guide the beast through potholes at slow speeds.
But all in all, the H2 SX is not a bad sports tourer. Despite its manic power, it still has some semblance of practicality. The 28L panniers are small, but are some of the easiest to handle and dismount. They do not upset the aerodynamics of the bike and while they cannot fit a helmet, are easy to open and close, and lock.
Without the panniers on, the H2 SX is a fine, mean looking machine. While the 260kg weight makes it heavy around town, it is still manageable, though you may pull a muscle once in a while.
And did I tell you about the fuel consumption? This bike is more economical than the H2. Its 19-litre tank can take you about 300km and Kawasaki says the fuel efficiency figures are similar to a Kawasaki Versys 1000 or Z1000SX.
Whether you can use it to its full potential on our highways is a whole different story. This missile is more suited for the autobahn than a wavy dual carriageway. Are there enough roads in Malaysia for you to play on? Probably not. Struggling to manage that massive power, you would probably one day be overtaken by a standard Japanese big tourer with a zealot rider.
Why would you buy the H2 SX? Yes, because it is special. This is a bike that will be an icon and a future legend. It is a modern equivalent of a Brough Superior SS100, which is the best of the best. Just like the H2, the H2 SX is the best in its class.
Then there is the sound of that supercharger.