Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14R Review: Transcendental Spaceship

The sweet hazards of Power

To put it in words, as much as the ZX-14R looks intimidating, in reality it happens to be an emotive beast which is calm, sober and playful, but also angry, decimating and bonkers at the same time. It will behave in the nicest manners when you respect it, but crack a violent whip and the big Ninja will gnash its teeth and bite you back with such ferocity, there isn’t a thread that has been made to stitch you back up. In the simplest of words, let me try and explain how some of us in the office are still torn.

There’s a whole lot of volcanic activity that bubbles within the 1,441cc, four cylinder motor which emanates 209 bhp of heat (With RAM air). While it remains on simmer below the 4000 rpm mark, the moment you breach that boiling point, dial in another thousand revs, your vitals start to rumble and the big Kawasaki erupts angrily, leaving a mirage of your soul behind once past the 7000 rpm mark. The thrust is so massive; it almost feels like an out of body experience, maybe similar to riding shotgun on a ballistic missile. The speedometer starts pointing at silly numbers as you duck behind the windscreen, trying to focus hard on our roads which are notorious to spring a surprise any moment. Your family jewels permitting, the ZX-14R’s demonic motor will redline all the way till 11,000 clicks with a widowed howl shrieking from the twin exhausts, but even if you somehow manage to coat your pearls in Kevlar, finding a stretch of road that allows you to do that and still return back home is like fishing with bare hands, and our country is a Dead Sea.

In all honesty, we didn’t find a stretch good enough to verify, but the ZX-14R has been tested to shoot off from 0 – 100 in 2.9 seconds, reaches the double ton in 7.6 and is chained to a top speed of 299 kph. In a straight line, the big Ninja can make mincemeat of a quarter mile in 9.7 seconds flat. Another thing that frightens you in an addictive manner is 153 Nm of twist that wrenches your guts in a way, only Kawasaki’s other supercharged offering can match.

Now, although it can and will chop your fantasies of speed in a whisker, let’s talk about the duality of this kind hearted Ninja assassin. Kawasaki has equipped the ZX-14R with three selectable traction control modes which go a long way in making even lesser riders feel like a mythical Demi God astride a wild Unicorn. Mode 1 and 2 intervene in an unobtrusive manner if you happen to wring carelessly, while number 3 makes the bike forgiving, saving you from the after effects of stupidity in slippery conditions. You can even turn the damn thing off, if wheeling on a tightrope is the sort of thing you’d like to excel at. There are two power maps too, called ‘F’ and ‘L’, where the latter tones down the throttle response and delivers around 75% of engine power, the former is an all out Woolly Mammoth digging its long curved tusks in your flesh, through your blood, uplifting you by your bones.

Here’s the surprising part, while at standstill, a motorcycle with such hooliganism coming through the rear wheels sounds trembling, once on the saddle, the ZX-14R can also be ridden in a relaxed manner if you like. With a wide enough and well padded saddle, a relaxed riding position compared to litre class blood mongers, the biggest Ninja is also a Hyper GT, more like a big bored V12 on two wheels that can comfortably cross borders at supersonic speeds as you fill your passport with visa stamps.

With a solid monocoque aluminium frame paired to beefy 43mm inverted cartridge forks at the front and a bottom link Uni-Trak gas charged shock at the rear, the 14R isn’t a big girl asking you for an arrow straight highway with no one on it. Take it to the twisties and the 14R is a treasure that asks you to look upon it. It will sing a glorious song on fast sweeping corners, maintaining steady composure as it drops down to pretty low lean angles with comfortable ease.

However, on tighter, back to back bends, the bulky proportions and the large wheelbase ensure they do make their presence felt. Having said that, the ZX-14R is an easy motorcycle to ride fast and courtesy of the raised clip-ons and easily accessible controls, is fairly easy to pilot around town too.

The human head can only take so much of a rush coming to the head, and that is exactly where the dual floating, 310mm petal discs with dual radial mounted four piston callipers at the front and a single 250 mm petal disc at the rear come to your rescue. Paired with an ABS system, hauling down this runaway train is never a problem. You could be doing manic speeds one moment, but if the one that follows, warrants grabbing a handful of the front lever and stomping on the pedal in panic, a lot of serious momentum is shed in a controlled manner, the ABS silently working in the background. There is no drama, although the wheelbase and the bulk might make you think otherwise. The back torque limiting clutch comes in play when you manage to be untidy with your downshifts after attaining a fairly high velocity and are on your way back down. Lever action is surprisingly smooth for a unit controlling such amounts of power.

Although one would expect the big, angry motor to disperse tonnes of heat, the clever dissipation system on the 14R works wonderfully, as we figured on a day when the mercury soared into the high 40’s. Another aspect where the 14R shines bright is in delighting the pillion who can join you to scream in glee.

Perched behind the rider in a comfortable space, sharing the joys of terror with another soul behind is just as exciting. So you find an empty stretch, slide backwards and bend to hide behind the large windscreen, the pillion grabbing you by your beer belly, making you feel like batman sliding deeper inside the batmobile, as he races against time to get a poisoned Miss Dawes to his palace and administer the antidote.

We know some of you with sticky fingertips must be imagining how much does this big green monster guzzle? Since you asked, it could be anything between 11 – 14 kpl.

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