It’s not a secret that Kawasaki since 2007 has produced a 300+ horsepower personal watercraft, lately with an Eaton brand, American-made roots-type supercharger, the same brand and kind found in the blown Chevy Corvette. The three-seater intercooled personal jetboat runs on 17.5 pounds of boost and simply screams right up to its U.S. Coast Guard controlled 68 mph top speed. Talk about fun on the water! Scary fast.

But did you know that in 2015 Kawasaki also introduced a 320-hp, 14,000 rpm, 476-pound centrifugally-supercharged semi-production motorcycle running an amazing 20.5 psi boost? They did. The hi-po but mass-produced (though by hand) bike was racing-only. But they also made a 200-hp street-legal version that is still available today. The track bike, whose purchase price included race stands, tire warmers and a set of spare slicks, was personally delivered to the purchaser by Kawasaki’s field tech team (it was not sold off dealers’ floors), and retailed for $50,000—the less powerful and less lavishly equipped road-going iteration for a mere $25,000. The power-to-weight ratio of the track bike is a fantastic 1.48:1. To put that into perspective, Ford’s brawny F150 of that same year, at the same power output but weighing almost twelve times as much, would have to have made 3900 horsepower to match the acceleration potential of the Ninja H2R!

Both Kawasaki Ninja H2 models’ centrifugal type superchargers are driven by a unique, proprietary planetary gear system that spins the compressor to a dizzying 130,000 rpm at full throttle. Yes, 130,000! Even at an engine idle, the specially-designed and lubricated, ceramic ball bearing supported supercharger is turning 10,000 rpm! The unit is not designed to be rebuildable, and the 5-axis machined impellor does not have a part number. And talk about hot! At 20.5 psi boost the bike’s sealed cast aluminum air filter box contains more than 35 psi of pressure, resulting in the owner’s manual warning that touching it can burn your hand!

Of course the Ninja H2 and H2R were very limited production, but they were in fact production motorcycles, not “one-offs”. The track model came with no warranty, but the road model had the usual full Kawasaki warranty. As with Tesla’s cars, Ninja H2 buyers put down a deposit—ten percent and non-refundable. The bikes were rare enough though, as can be imagined by the prices of some of their replacement parts. They were assembled in Japan by a special three-man team, and essentially handmade. How about $7,000 for the R model’s hydraulically formed, exquisitely hand-welded, oval-primary, 120db Titanium exhaust system? Or $3200 for a replacement bare trellis frame; $3300 for the R model’s beautifully hand-laid carbon fibre, literal silver-infused-painted, “black chrome” front fairing; $1500 for the ECU, $3300 for the supercharger; $150 for the sidestand (!), and almost $30 for the each of the H2’s unique, over one-inch-long-thread spark plugs? And the completely race-spec (zero-clearance) Brembo brake parts that are all non-rebuildable? To keep people from using some of the engine parts to presumably build their own hotrod, a list of the R model’s parts was restricted from purchase. You had to prove you owned the offroad model before you could buy any of its replacement parts. And to really get an idea of the racebike’s power output and general exclusivity, consider that it has an uber-frequent, 15-hour maintenance schedule that results in the mandatory replacement of the connecting rods, exhaust valves, drive chain, fuel pump, rear wheel dampers, pistons, crankshaft bearings, and transmission output shaft when the engine has accumulated an internally-recorded and instrument-displayed 15, 30, and ultimately 60 hours of above-8,000 rpm use. Yowser!

And the superlative nature of this bike doesn’t stop there. The fuel injection throttle bodies are 50mm in inside diameter! Fifty! Two inches! The stainless steel intake valves are 30mm, the 26mm exhaust valves are made of inconel, and the R model’s intake duration is 320 degrees! Unusually long for a pressure-bike. The cylinder head includes special cooling passages around the spark plugs. The intake ports are polished. Every single bolt on the engine—including the drain plug—is Allen (socket) -headed. The bike sports ride-by-wire and all of the other high-tech features high end sport bikes do, such as ABS, ECO (fuel saving mode), billet chrome-moly camshafts, computer-controlled steering damping, traction control, electronic speed shifter, launch control, assist/slip clutch, electronically selectable power levels (including one that cuts power in half for riding in the rain), electronic engine braking control, an AOS (cartridge) front fork, radially-mounted brake calipers, enormous 330mm front brake discs, an engine-mounted single-sided swingarm, and a tiny 8.6 A/H battery. The bike also boasts a 32-bit aluminum encased ECU, the engine’s crankshaft main journals are a beefy 38mm, and the transmission is uniquely pyramid-stacked—meaning the gears are placed in a row beginning with the smallest and ending in the largest, and is operated by dog-rings, lubricated by twelve strategically-placed oil jets (12!, half of them on just the shift forks!), and is hand-shimmed at the Akashi factory and replacements available only as an assembly.

Kawasaki made much of the H2 and H2R. Over a period of almost a year before officially announcing the bike at the industry’s EICMA show in Germany, the company released twenty-six teaser videos online, each revealing just a little bit more of the bike’s fantastic features, under the very appropriate official company theme of, “Beyond Belief”. Even the model name, “H2”, was calculated to represent the over-the-top target performance of the new Ninja, hearkening back as it did to Kawasaki’s 1970s 74-hp “Mach IV”, the two-stroke 750 triple whose out-of-the-crate 120-mph top speed and flat 12-second quarter mile insanely worshipped a boldly in-your-face, houligan dedication to acceleration. Well, ditto the Ninja H2, purposely designed for that jelly-in-your-spinal-column g-force and to that effect whose ignition timing is ECU-programmed to advance momentarily at just the right instant, solely to enhance the machine’s addictive forward thrust (Kawasaki’s first knock sensor on a production road bike is expressly included to babysit this feature)! And with the industry’s first mass-produced road-going supercharger—talk about a no-holds-barred performance agenda!

All in all an awesome, one of a kind motorcycle that will be hard to forget even as technology in the powersports marketplace marches on. I’m glad I was there for its introduction. More... and more... and more..., and more...

Part 4