Kawasaki clothes the naked Z1000, comforts the afflicted with an all-new Ninja 1000.
October 2010
The road up Mt. Tamalpais is paved with good intentions but covered in a thick coniferous carpet of dropped foliage from the huge redwood and Douglas firs that canopy it. Hmmm, is this any place for a 50-year-old motojournalist on a 503-pound 136-hp Kawasaki? At first it seems like a terrible idea, but after slithering through a few corners, you figure out this is a really friendly, well-insured Kawasaki that’s got your back. All that new bodywork tells the casual observer it’s another one of them Ninjabikes. But with the same upright ergos as the Z1000 naked bike it’s built upon, this newest Ninja puts the rider in a position of complete control to deal with dodgy traction, flying fellow squids and all the other slings, arrows and banana peels the road throws at him. Pretty soon the smell of all that fresh pine sizzling on hot exhaust takes me right back to circa 1965, jumping in raked-up piles of pine needles just before my dad did what they all did in those pre-green days—throw on a match. Mmmm...
To go with the great ergonomics, Kawasaki gave this one full-coverage plastic designed to draw engine heat away from the rider, a three-position, manual-adjust windscreen, 10mm-thicker seat foam, rubber footpegs, etc. Not only is the new Ninja 1000 a clothed naked bike (because we Americans just like fairings, apparently), Kawasaki thinks it could also bridge the gap to its Concours 14, for riders who want a lighter, less complex sport tourer. To that end, it also gets a 5-gallon fuel tank and a bunch of available options, including hard saddlebags (still in the works).
As to why you’d clothe such a great naked bike in the first place, Kawasaki’s research and experience tell it that’s what American riders want, and at $10,999, the new fairing only adds $400 to what you’d pay for the naked Z1000, so what the heck?
Mainly what it gets is a killer of a classic Kawasaki four-banger, just like the 1043cc unit that powers the Z1000. Power comes on smooth enough from way low in the rev band to let the rear Bridgestone BT016 find traction even on this Christmas-tree killing floor of a road. And on those rare clean stretches where the pavement briefly uncoils, the thing pulls hard from as little as 3500 rpm. This motor makes you recalibrate your internal tachometer. Kawasaki says it makes the same peak torque as its new ZX-10R, but at 7800 rpm instead of 8700. By the time the tach gets to 7000, you definitely want your full attention focused far ahead on the road, and your brain ready to deal with the 136-hp Kawasaki says it produces at 9600 rpm. Thanks to its bodywork, they also say it’ll reach terminal velocity quicker than the Z1000, and because of that, its speed is electronically governed to a mph the Kawasaki spokespeople would not reveal—an admission, to a bunch of motojournalists, tantamount to Mission Control Houston initiating countdown.
Sadly, due to traffic and lack of long straights in appropriate places, all I can say is that limit lies somewhere on the other side of 136-mph indicated on the bike’s digital display—and 136 is a speed the Ninja can dial up in a hurry. On the straights through inhabited areas, though, you can drop the engine down to 1500 rpm and 25 mph in sixth, roll the throttle back open, and the Ninja will pull itself right back up to speed with no complaints whatsoever. Way flexible. With this engine, an automatic gearbox would be redundant.
On a racetrack, a ZX-10R or any Open-class sportbike would annihilate the Ninja. Sorting through Mt. Tam’s endless junk drawer of slippery blind corners, on the other hand, the tables are turned. With its immediate, smooth grunt off the bottom and sit-up, wide-barred ergos (the grips are actually 10mm closer to each other than on the Z1000), the Ninja feels more like a big, faired-in adventure bike, with the majority of your weight planted squarely on your butt and feet, where you can feel what both tires are up to. (The rear enjoys roosting the people behind you with pine-tree shrapnel. Toothpick, anyone?) At the same time, in spite of the weight the bike gained, it steers light, quick and accurately into corners with clean pavement, and the fact that it’s narrow between the knees just like the Z1000 also helps it snap easily side to side.
The 41mm fully-adjustable fork and preload/rebound-adjustable single-shock rear are on the harsh side of plush compared to the components Kawasaki puts on its more expensive bikes, but then I’m 20 or 30 pounds lighter than the typical American Ninja buyer. The BT016 Bridgestones and suspension do do a fine job keeping things balanced front-to rear and in general keeping the bike pointed in the right direction—not such an easy thing given the torque the engine doles out. Accelerating hard over truly bumpy pavement with the front wheel only marginally in ground contact, the bike always kept its composure, even without benefit of a steering damper. And radial-mount brake calipers operated by a radial-pump master cylinder don’t feel budget at all; they’re two-finger powerful, linear-feeling and nicely sensitive to trail braking.
In the most upright of its three positions, the new windshield might be nice for touring, but we never went straight long enough to find out. (And when we were going straight, we were trying to find the secret top speed.) And the new bodywork might suck hot air from the engine and away from your legs as advertised, but it was only in the 60s in Marin County that day, a place as close to Eden as you’ll find in the continental U.S., so we can’t really address that either. What we can address is, even though we only covered a couple hundred miles in our day with the new Ninja, nearly every one of those miles was hard-fought, and when the sun was setting into the Pacific at the end of it, we all would’ve been happy to keep on riding. No complaints from the old guys (which I suddenly am one of). Sportbike performance and sport-touring comfort are a tough combination to beat.
As to why you’d clothe such a great naked bike in the first place, Kawasaki’s research and experience tell it that’s what American riders want, and at $10,999, the new fairing only adds $400 to what you’d pay for the naked Z1000, so what the heck? If the fairing broadens the appeal of a bike that was already really appealing (a CW Ten Best), everybody’s happy. Its research also tells Kawasaki that lots of people who buy “performance cruisers” like the Suzuki M109, aren’t necessarily cruiser guys, but they might very well be performance guys no longer willing to assume the sportbike position the performance war left in its wake. Alrighty then, says Kawasaki. This Ninja’s for you.
| SPECIFICATIONS | |
|---|---|
| Engine | Liquid-cooled, DOHC, four valves per cylinder, inline-Four |
| Displacement | 1043cc |
| Bore x Stroke | 77.0 x 56.0 mm |
| Compression Ratio | 11.8:1 |
| Fuel System | Fuel injection, four 38mm Keihin throttle bodies, oval sub-throttles |
| Ignition | TCBI with digital advance |
| Transmission | Six-speed |
| Final Drive | X-ring Chain |
| Rake/Trail | 24.5deg / 4.0 in. |
| Front Tire Size | 120/70 ZR17 |
| Rear Tire Size | 190/55 ZR17 |
| Wheelbase | 56.9 in. |
| Front Suspension / wheel travel | 41 mm inverted cartridge fork; adjustable for compression damping, rebound damping, spring preload; 4.7 in. travel |
| Rear Suspension / wheel travel | Horizontal monoshock; adjustable for rebound damping and spring preload; 5.4 in. travel |
| Front Brakes | Dual 300mm petal-type rotors with radial-mount four-piston calipers |
| Rear Brakes | Single 250mm petal-type rotor with single-piston caliper |
| Fuel Capacity | 5.0 gal. |
| Seat Height | 32.3 in. |
| Curb Weight | 502.7 lbs. |
| Colors | Ebony, Candy Fire Red / Ebony |
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