Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R Review : Lethally Sublime

Some wise guy once said that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believe Spider Man also said something to that effect, didn’t he?

In my case, this corruption came in the form of a lean, mean, and green Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R. How corrupt someone can be, you ask. Plenty, if you’re gifting him almost 200 horses of power, and then setting him loose on the best stretch of biking road this side of the subcontinent, the ghats of Lavasa.

Images: Vaibhav Aher

Litre-class sportsbikes, or superbikes as they’re commonly called, are the crown jewels of most motorcycle manufacturers. Every manufacturer worth its salt has one, or aspires to have one. Sure, there are bigger, more powerful, or just plain faster bikes out there, but this is where the real war for automotive glory takes place. This is the no-holds barred battlefield.

Superbikes are also where the majority of the learnings and discoveries from the racing world start tricking down to the end customer, before eventually making their way down the pecking order. Take Kawasaki’s own example. The just-launched H2 and H2R are incredibly fast and advanced marvels of automotive engineering, and they outclass the ZX-10R on many fronts. But they are niche products that will mostly never be ridden in as much anger as the ZX-10R. Same goes for the hyper mile muncher that is the ZX-14R, another motorcycle we are finally getting to review after ages.

The ZX-10R, by contrast, cut its teeth on the track. It is the motorcycle that gave Tom Sykes his first Superbike World Championship in 2013. Like its direct competitors, it is a track machine built for the road. And the public loves such machines. Superbikes are one of the biggest selling categories at the higher end of the food chain in developed countries. Even in a relatively nascent country like India, superbikes are what we collectively term almost all big bikes. And most of the moneyed motorcycle fans here usually gravitate towards them more than they do any other category. You will spot these litre-class bikes more easily than other CBUs at any biker hangout in the metros.

So, yeah, the Ninja ZX-10R has a lot to live up to. I mean, forget its competition, its own history is pretty illustrious in itself, even if a tad short. When it was first introduced in 2004, it swept up almost all Superbike of the Year awards from major automotive publications, culminating in the prestigious Masterbike trophy that is collectively awarded by some of the best automotive journalists from various publications in the west.

The game has changed since then, and new entrants have kept coming, each bringing with it something new either in track-worthiness, or weight-reduction, or electronics, or just plain outright power. Every year, manufacturers update their litre-class bikes by varying degrees, just to keep pace with the rapidly-evolving developments. It could be something as trivial as new colour and sticker options for a couple of years, followed by a radical reinvention every few years, but update it they will for sure every year.

The ZX-10R we have here was given its own radical overhaul back in 2011. It has seen some incremental updates since then, but they have mostly been limited to the aforementioned colour options and small enhancements here and there.

Does this bike, once the hands-down best superbike in the world, still have what it takes in the face of worthier competition? That’s what we are here to find out today, and, outside of commandeering a racetrack or a private airstrip, we also have the best place to get busy with.

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