Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128360
WILL THE NEW 6R BE THE KING OF THE CLASS? f 2004 was the year of the Open-class sportbike, then 2005 is without a doubt the year of the middleweight. The coming season is graced by the presence of new middleweight sportbikes from Honda, Yamaha, Triumph, and from Kawasaki - in the form of its new ZX6R. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Kawasaki Ninja 600, so it was the perfect time to bring out its most badass middleweight ever. Back in 2003, Kawasaki introduced its supersized 600 to the U.S. market, and now it's the number-one selling motorcycle in Kawasaki's line - period. The point was to create a middleweight that was much more street savvy, with added torque right where it was needed the most, down low and in the midrange. Since the 636's inception, it has been a favorite around here. Not only has the bike consis- I 20 tently been one of the lightest in the class, it has also been one of the most powerful. Some may complain that allowing the ZX-6R to compete against the 600s is like comparing apples to oranges, but in our opinion they are just taking fruit from the wrong basket. When it comes to racing, Kawasaki has the ZX-6RR homologation model, which is the bike that Tommy Hayden won the 2004 AMA Supersport Championship on. However, there isn't a good reason that we can think of that the street rider should be penalized because of Supersport-racing rules. Last year, the ZX-6R narrowly lost our Cycle News Middleweight Shootout to the Suzuki GSX-R600. The primary reason was that the Suzuki actually made more torque from its 599cc motor than the larger displacement ZX-6R, was almost as light, had superior suspension and had a more flick- JANUARY 12,2005 • CYCLE NEWS able chassis. It looks like Kawasaki has attacked all of the bike's deficiencies from last year and improved the areas that we complained about. Kawasaki decided it needed to build an over-the-top middleweight - the same philosophy it used to come up with its performance king ZX-IOR a year ago. The new ZX-6R is all about performance. The motor has been extensively changed for improved power, the bodywork and shape of the bike has been fine-tuned to make it more aerodynamically efficient, and the suspension and brakes have been upgraded for better performance. The introduction for the new bike took place in Almeria, Spain, a locale that only receives nine days of rain a year on average. Guess what? We were there for two of them. We ended up doing the street ride on the first day because of the rain, but it let up enough to give me an idea of how the bike works in everyday street-riding situations. The most noticeable thing about the new bike is how powerful the motor feels. It doesn't feel quite as strong as the 650cc Triumph in the bottom of the rev range, but from the midrange on up, the ZX-6R feels like a rocket ship. The power exiting corners is impressive, with the motor pulling cleanly without any hesitation. On a couple of occasions the road opened up onto a long straight and I held the throttle to the stop to see what the motor's top-end felt like. I came away impressed. The bike pulls very hard deep into triple-digit speeds. However, Mother Nature had different plans for my day than I did, so I was only able to get a limited amount of information from the street ride on the wet roads. Spanish weather forecasters are fortunately no better than their American coun-