with flying colours. It does take a deliberate shift in the old head to accept how good these new systems are but once you do … Again, it is technology with a purpose and I know this will make a lot of you choke on your beer but … I wouldn’ t bother buying a fast road bike without this six-axis voodoo. There, I said it. Can you outbrake this bike without ABS in an emergency? No. Just no. I get that, on a racetrack, with hot tyres, on a known surface, some( but only a minority) may be able to match or even marginally better it. But, and here is the big but … strong, practised braking has one element of an emergency stop missing – fear. When you are actually shit-scared, you will not brake and avoid that car by your own human self like you can with such magic on your side.
DIFFERENT PERSONAS Sporty enough to slake the desires of all but the hardest of hardcore sportsbike lovers, civilised enough to ride through the CBD, happy to be loaded up with pillion and, in this bike’ s trim, snazzy Ventura luggage is there for a few bits and bobs, it is almost what big bikes used to be.
As in, if you can only justify one bike to do all things, it needs to be flexible, powerful and just awesome at everything, not brutally focused on one task or ride. Compromise? Yep, sure, but what a compromise. I also headed into town and wanted lockable luggage for my helmet and a few other essentials, so I swapped the drybag-lined Ventura pack for the solid Ventura top-box from my own bike and simply put it on the Ninja ZX1100SX for the day … There’ s that flexible theme again, huh?
MY CONCLUSION? I love it. In an increasingly crowded market segment, I’ m picking it as my preferred option. The touring segment has split into the loaded luxury, tall tourer, sports-tourer( enter the Kawasaki ZX1100SX), Adventure tourer and seminaked, making choice a challenge. If I was to only have one motorcycle … One? Nah, that won’ t happen this side of the worm farm but I would be chuffed to have Kawasaki’ s ZX1100SX in my shed with a few others. Off to buy a Lotto ticket then …
68 KIWI RIDER