Kawasaki Z1000SX: Real World Road Test

At Bike Social, we pride ourselves on bringing you the most comprehensive group tests online and with the being first with the new model reviews. But each week our man Scott Redmond brings another angle to our road tests. With one man, one bike and a tank of fuel, Scott hits the road to give you his verdict on a current model bike, seeing how it performs as he goes about his daily life. This week, it's the Kawasaki Z1000SX.

Is there still a place for the sports tourer in these days of the adventure bike? To find out, I took custody to the keys of Kawasaki’s Z1000SX, one of the company’s top selling bikes of the last few years.

Let’s be honest, the Z1000SX isn’t much of a looker. It’s not a terrible design, but when you remind yourself of bikes like the ZRX series and even early Z1000 models, they all had something about them. I know though not to judge a book by the film though, and beneath the ample bodywork lurks a bike that’s designed to do a job and to do it in style, so to speak.

There’s a fat 190 section tyre on the back and four pot monobloc radial calipers cling on to inverted forks. Those brakes haul up 300mm discs. The petal effect is something Kawasaki still enjoy, as they appear on plenty of other bikes in their 2016 range. The bike isn’t an anorexic, weighing in at 231 kilos. That’s a lot of bulk to lug about. I can’t help but wonder how many cakes do those funky looking silencers weigh? They are a nice touch but their cartoonish dimensions look awkward once your initial enthusiasm wanes.

Pushing the mass along is a four-cylinder, water cooled 16 valve engine. There’s nothing overly new or fangled about its construction, and the 1043cc engine is tuned to spit out 140bhp. In these days of intergalactic sports bikes that tease you with many more ponies, you could feel underwhelmed by the power on tap. I think we need a reality check here. One hundred and forty horses isn’t to be sniffed at. That’s around the same poke that the original R1 gave out.

To see what these ingredients of weight, power and ergonomics result in, I necked the 19 litre tank and bid the city of Peterborough a farewell. I pointed the chubby face of the Zed towards the east. My journey’s end would be the Lincolnshire seaside town of Skegness, which lay around 70 miles away. From the sprawl of Peterborough the Zed carried me in supreme comfort out through the countryside and eventually deposited me by the coast. I enjoyed this ride more than I thought I would. Here’s why:

The big Z1000SX is perfectly at home in the real world. Although my ride was in temperatures in the mid 20s, it was accompanied by very gusty winds. These were felt the hardest across the A15 artery as I left Peterborough and headed out Spalding way. The flatness of the Fens that the trunk road scythes through making me easy pickings for strong winds. The weight of the Kawasaki helped to keep me on track. Also aiding my progress was the screen. It looks like an afterthought, with a chunk of Perspex bolted to a series of flimsy brackets, but it works remarkably well. There’s scope to adjust it but I left it be, as for me the position it was in was spot on.