Atouring bike with launch control! Is it just me or is that the oxymoron of the century? I’m not complaining, far from it, but Kawasaki’s exciting and slightly confusing H2 SX, which we test this issue, really does hammer home the state of the industry. Times are changing, and the days of tourers being built wholeheartedly for going the distance and sportsbikes being the polar opposite have run their course.
Those once clear lines of definition are being blurred, which is an exciting proposition. It costs a spine-tingling amount of money to develop state of the art technology, so Kawasaki’s investment in the hyper-sports H2 and H2R was never going to be exclusive. Let’s not pretend this is the first time we’ve seen it happen either; just look at Yamaha’s do-it-all MT family. As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and I reckon Yamaha’s found just about every imaginable way of repurposing its CP3 motor and MT-09 running gear. Who can blame them? A bit of exclusivity is nice every now and again, but it comes at a price.