FIRST RIDE: BIMOTA TESI H2

Supercharged, hub-steered, jewel of a motorcycle.

Exotic strangeness is everywhere on the Bimota Tesi H2. The front wheel is bereft of forks and held by a vast swingarm machined from one block of aluminium. Above it, carbon wings as big as tea trays sprout from the fairing. And just when you think it’s getting conventional towards the rear, you spot two Öhlins shock absorbers nestling behind the engine – one suspending the front wheel, the other the rear. Plus of course there’s the small matter of a 237bhp supercharged engine taken from Kawasaki’s sledgehammer H2.

Despite all this, the idea behind the bike is straightforward. Infact, there’s a deranged logic to it: Kawasaki now own Bimota, so why not take the best bits from each company’s most famous model, bolt them together and serve with lashings of carbon fibre? The result is the most extreme production bike on sale, but what’s it actually like to ride? And can it possibly be worth £59,000? We take it for a rapid blast to the coast to answer the allimportant questions.