2017 KAWASAKI NINJA 650 ABS
FIRST TEST
P100
Case in point, since 2006,
some 60,000 modern liquid-
cooled parallel-twin motorcycles
have been sold in the U.S.
alone—70 percent of them being
Ninja 650s. Sixty-percent of
650s purchased from Kawasaki
in the past 10 years have been
from first-time-ever street bike
owners. Many of the remain-
ing buyers are previous owners
of machines like the Ninja 300
who are looking for a "bridge"
of sorts between their smaller
displacement machines and the
more advanced, more aggres-
sive (and expensive) supersports
like a ZX-6R or ZX-10R.
For me, personally, as an
experienced street rider and
professional racer, I have, in the
past, migrated almost exclusively
to the fastest sportbikes made
available to us mere mortals.
However, having just spent a
full day atop a Ninja 650 rid-
ing along and over the beautiful
"THERE'S SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL ABOUT HOW THE MIDRANGE OF THIS
PARTICULAR CONFIGURATION OF MOTOR, A PARALLEL-TWIN, GETS DELIVERED."
