Words: Dipayan Dutta
Photography: Gaurav S Thombre
It looks down at you condescendingly, the H2. That sinister face dripping with heinous intent, it’s almost as if it’s cheekily asking, ‘you really believe you’re ready for this?’ Like a scene from the exorcist, the Kawasaki H2 gets into your head, possesses and corrupts the mind. It demands – and gets – respect. With a little trepidation you thumb the starter, engage first and open the throttle. And the ensuing couple of seconds, the memory, sears itself permanently in your head. Time warps around you, one second that didn’t really exist makes its way into your brain. Just about long enough for you to feel all your muscles flex into position and an almost pre-emptive surge of adrenaline hits every corner of your body. You’re flung back in the seat, holding on for dear life as the H2 rockets towards the ton before you can so much as exhale. That’s what the H2 is all about – shock and awe.
And this has a lot to do with the machine the H2 can trace its gene pool to. In the 1970s almost every manufacturer had a 750cc superbike – Norton had the 120mph Commando (200kmph, in the seventies!), MV the 750S, Ducati the 750SS. When Kawasaki jumped into battle with the H2 Mach IV, testers back then coined the phrase ‘tore up the rule book’ to describe it. Kawasaki’s built a 750cc two-stroke monster, soon to be re-named ‘the widow maker’. You know, because it was mild mannered and friendly.
Just like the new one.
From the moment you lay eyes on it, the H2 is a sensory overload.Each angle is sharp as hell, as though sculpted with a katana, and every single one is there for a purpose – aerodynamics, or downforce, or possibly time travel. Two massive intakes flank the H2’s LED headlight and feed air to the supercharger mounted behind the 998cc engine’s cylinder bank. There’s also LED lighting in the mirrors and tail lights. Then there’s the paint that has a coat of pure silver to give the base coat of black a more dramatic feel. And boy! Oh boy! Does it do the trick! Looking into the paint feels like you are looking into infinity. The H2 really is that droplet of absolutely unhinged eccentricity in an ocean that’s already swarming with ridiculously mental machines; a true one-of-a-kind unlike anything else in existence.
How unique is the Kawasaki? Sample this. During the development stage, supercharger suppliers who went through the technical bids apparently said, ‘It’s impossible, it can’t be done.’But Kawasaki is Japanese and the Japanese do not have a word for engineering-impossibility, and so they turned to their aerospace division. The end result is an impeller built out of a single piece of billet aluminium, with 12 blades precisely cut by a five-axis CNC mill. Spinning at 9.2 times crank speed, it means the supercharger is whizzing at 130,000rpm when the engine is at its 14,000rpm rev limit. And that pressurises the air 2.4 times before feeding it into hungry cylinders. The process of mating the supercharger to the engine requires so much attention to detail that two engineers are dedicated just to this task at the factory.
The in-line, four-cylinder engine is new from the ground up and was designed to be supercharged from the get-go. It is also built completely in-house by Kawasaki’s motorcycle, gas turbine and aerospace divisions. The supercharger is lightweight and so efficient it doesn’t need to run a bulky intercooler. It also means you get a large spread of power just about anywhere and everywhere.
Just one more pub fact though before I get to the ride – the rear portion of the seat has been designed so that it can be adjusted to three different positions, ensuring Darth Vader doesn’t get detached from the H2 under acceleration. You see the H2 doesn’t merely accelerate, it warps time.
Crank the motor and it sounds like there’s a velociraptor lurking under the fairing. Blip the throttle and the raptor gets pissed off, you can hear that supercharger sucking in large parts of the landscape, not to mention curious children. The weird thing is though, as intimidating as she looks and sounds, once you’re in the saddle and forget (for a brief second) the price tag, it doesn’t feel more bulky or unwieldy as any other litre-class bike. And that’s a problem. When you forget that it’s not just any other litre-class bike. You get a bit adventurous with throttle openings and there it is again, the unmistakable whine of the supercharger dumping compressed air into the engine; before your brain has had a chance to process all this information and react you are already into triple digits. And the first of those digits starts with 2. Ease off the throttle, drop through the gears on the MotoGP style dog-ring transmission and bathe in that supercharger blow-off as the revs drop you back to speeds that a regular non-Rossi brain can relate to. Note to self: unclench sphincter.
Here’s the thing; on paper the H2 makes 197bhp of power, and with the superbikes like the R1 making power figures far north of 200bhp you might think I’m waxing eloquent because I’ve just graduated from a Pulsar. But you forget that supercharging results in an insane 133Nm of torque. That translates to about 561Nm of torque per tonne. To put that into perspective the La Ferrari makes 557.
Where naturally aspirated engines tend to have linearity, forced induction throws a monkey wrench into every calculation. At lower revs the H2 feels almost normal; you’d probably notice that the response is just a tad quicker. The moment you notice the number 2 light up on the blacked out rev counter is when all hell breaks loose. Point the H2 at a straight and the raptor in the engine bay lets out a high pitched shriek and the horizon hurtles towards you at an unsettling pace.
That said, it’s not like the H2 will not corner. You may not be able to sink your shoulder into the blacktop like a ZX10, but it does get down without much hassle. Surprisingly it even manages to make a clean U-turn in under 30 feet without even having to get your foot off the pegs.
Now don’t get me wrong, the H2 is not raucous nor is it uncivilised or brutal. There is just a motherload of power on tap just about anywhere in the rev-range. And it just goes. Although this may well be courtesy that alphabet soup of electronics that come with the H2 – launch control, engine brake control and nine-stage traction control keeping the H2 grounded. Needless to say, being in no way an expert rider, I didn’t dare turn any of these off. What’s strange is that on a bike this high-end there is no lean angle sensor and consequently no cornering ABS. That also means the traction control system isn’t quite as clever as others in the market. The R1 has six gyros measuring pitch, roll, yaw, and what you ate for breakfast. The H2 has none. It’s an advanced system, but it’s still a generation behind the rest. Maybe Kawasaki thought it wouldn’t really need it.
Speaking of advanced systems, varying levels of engine/braking effect can be set via Kawasaki Engine Brake Control (KEBC), and the H2 also has rider-adjustable antilock braking. KTRC traction control is a welcome feature on a bike with as much twist as this. There are three levels of TC, and within those are three more sub-levels for a total of nine. Mode 3 is for wet pavement, mode 2 is for dry roads, while mode 1 is for use on a racetrack.
Then there’s Kawasaki Launch Control Mode (KLCM) which I’m told allows you to launch the H2 with the throttle held wide open. Let me repeat – it allows a rider to launch from rest with the throttle held wide open, with the ECU holding revs at a pre-determined level. Just like a car’s launch control. Neither is this my bike nor do I think my Ducati can pay for even the mirrors of the H2 and so we left experimenting with the launch control for another day.
Which brings me to the biggest problem. How do you classify the H2 to sum up everything I’ve just talked about? The H2 isn’t really a track machine like the ZX10R, the handle bars are set to make you comfortable even when the roads get slightly worse for the wear. Nor is it much of a hyper-sport as the ZX14R – do you really think you can slap on a set of panniers and go touring across Africa? It most certainly isn’t your average sports bike either; it’s way too aggressive and exotic for any sort of tomfoolery. What it possibly is, is the ultimate road-going motorcycle. A McLaren F1 on two wheels, engineered beyond imagination. Something that will leave its mark on history. It is exactly what it says on the box – the ultimate road going motorcycle right now. Built beyond belief.