Fresh from the Tokyo Motor Show, Team Green has released truly a tantalizing machine, the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R.
I have to be honest, I didn’t think the internet rumors were true on this one, but I love being wrong about this model release.
We didn’t think we would ever again see the day, but here is a four-cylinder 250cc sport bike that by our quick math, could be the most powerful 250cc motorcycle ever made.
In gearing up for the new bike season, I wrote to our A&R Pro members that Suzuki is a brand that seems lost in the woods.
The new models are uninspiring, the marketing seems flat, and while the brand keeps bringing back names from the glory years, the bikes are shadows of their former selves.
Here it is, the next installment in Kawasaki’s supercharged future. As predicted, the 2020 Kawasaki Z H2 is a supercharged naked bike, with 200hp (147.1 kW) on tap and 101 lbs•ft of (137 Nm) torque from its 998cc four-cylinder engine.
Unlike the Kawasaki Ninja H2, the Z H2 fills the role of the Z family of bikes, and is a true naked bike. But like its H2 siblings, the Kawasaki Zh2 features a green steel trellis frame.
While we don’t know who the second rider will be at the factory-backed Honda team next year in WorldSBK, we do know who it won’t be…and it won’t be Leon Camier.
This is because Camier is headed to a different red bike, the Ducati Panigale V4 R at Barni Racing, for the 2020 season.
A brand we often don’t hear too much about, Moto Morini is showing some interesting prospects that are set to debut at the upcoming EICMA show in Milan.
The biggest comes in the form of this teaser concept sketch (see above), which outlines the lines of an adventure-touring model from the Italian brand.
Now under Chinese ownership, Moto Morini is actually looking like it will have robust set of bikes debuting for the 2020 model year, with this ADV machine joined by both a scrambler and naked model.
Bad news for electric motorcycle race fans, as the organizers of the Isle of Man TT have announced that they will no longer hold the TT Zero event for the 2020 and 2021 editions of the iconic road race.
The Isle of Man’s Department of Enterprise says in a press release that it has become “increasingly challenging” to run the electric class and to find competitors for it each year.
Of course, anyone watching the TT Zero race will see that the only promising entries came from the Mugen team, that the starting grids were single-digits in number, and that both factors made for lackluster viewing.
William Shakespeare wrote the story “Much Ado About Nothing” which easily could have been the true telling of the Harley-Davidson LiveWire production halt, which we reported last week.
This is because we are happy to report that Harley-Davidson has resumed the production line for its first electric motorcycle model, after determining that concerns over the bike’s charging system were localized to a single model.
It is finally here! Our favorite time of the year! I am of course talking about the new bike season, where the majority of the new motorcycles for the coming model year are debuted at events around the world.
For this round, the model year is going to be a year filled with new bikes, primarily because of the changes required for the Euro5 homologation. As such, we expect to see virtually every manufacturer coming out with something new, especially at the EICMA show in Italy and the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan.
What is interesting about this year’s edition though is how many bikes we will see before these to stalwart events. This is because the brands are finally catching on that their products get lost in the sea of unveilings that occur in Milan and Tokyo.
Accordingly, we see Ducati setting up its own special event in Rimini for October 23rd. Similarly, other brands have teased late-October and early-November unveiling dates for select models, though we expect more will follow Ducati’s lead in the coming years.
With a number of intriguing models teased and rumored ahead of these events, it will be interesting to see what actually comes true. To get our A&R Pro readers ready for the onslaught, I have put together one big fat awesome guide to the new motorcycle releases for 2020.
This list is as comprehensive as I can make it, and quite frankly a lot more detailed than what I’ve seen elsewhere on the internet, probably because it involves A&R pestering our Bothan spies for info all year.
I will update this story as more rumors surface ahead of the trade shows and unveiling events.
Episode 120 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show, as the production championship comes to us from Argentina.
As such, this means that we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are our World Superbike reporting duo for the 2019 season.
Recording straight from trackside at the Argentinean track, the guys give some conversation about the on-track action at San Juan, including the issues with the track surface.
Motorcyclists who bleed green will be happy to hear that Kawasaki has FIVE new models to show us, between its unveilings at the Tokyo Motor Show and what is to come at EICMA.
From the company’s website, two of the upcoming machines will debut in Tokyo, while the other three will be launched at EICMA. Best of all, we have a pretty good idea what those bikes will be.
Not to be outdone by Ducati’s upcoming Streetfighter V4, the folks in Austria are gearing up to revise their highly acclaimed KTM 1290 Super Duke R.
As before, “Beast 2.0” gets teased to us with a variety of quick-cuts in a video, though each of them gives us a glimpse of what is to come from Mattighofen.
What we don’t see though is the spec-sheet, and that is where the new battle in the streetfighter segment is going to be waged.