Kawasaki H2 SX

Kawasaki take their ballistic supercharged H2, fettle, add panniers and hey presto sports touring gets a SX change…

WONDROUS THOUGH THE supercharged H2 was when it landed from outer space in 2015, it’s an irrelevance for most of us – too expensive, too tiring to ride and utterly impractical. It’s a glorious Sunday-afternoon bauble for the lucky few. The H2 SX, on the other hand, is where Kawasaki’s supercharger offensive gets interesting, by giving us lesser mortals the chance to join the 200bhp club for the price of a fully loaded R1200GS. Not only is the price more realistic – the base model costs £15,099 – so is everything else. The riding position is comfortable, throttle response civilised (mostly, but we’ll come to that later) and there are practical touches galore. The premium version, the SE, even gets a centrestand and heated grips as standard. This could be a warp-factor VFR750 for the 21st century. To find out, we headed to the world launch in Portugal and discovered there are five reasons you want an H2 SX: