2010 Kawasaki Ninja 250R Review - Motorcycle.com

It's been a while since I wrote about motorcycles...

The Kawasaki Ninja 250 and 500 are always on my short list of motorcycles to get - someday. I like small, compact, nimble motorcycles ever since I had the Ascot way back when. I've had a few four cylinder motorcycles over the years, none of them sport bikes, and they bored me silly. They moved well enough and I tricked them out a bit. The engine sound alone put me off. The bulk and weight, especially on the street, made me think "why?" With the low speed limits in my area ten tenth's riding comes at a lot lower speeds than a race track. Even a scooter is powerful enough for these speed limits.

Handling is another matter altogether. Anyone can go fast in a straight line. There's no trick to that. Get into the twisties and a skilled rider can give an unskilled rider a run for the money at any speed. I proved that often enough with my old, tricked out Ascot. It wasn't much for acceleration or top speed but on a twisty road I was fearless. There was no little mass to shift and it was too narrow to touch anything down. That broad torque band made it easy to hold a gear when others were shifting like mad.

But the real point of this article is where are all the quarter and half liter motorcycles? What we have now are scooters in that displacement. I'm not knocking scooters but I can't quite see myself canyon carving on a 250 or 500 scooter wringing the hell out of the automatic transmission. I have a few mountain roads in mind where an automatic would be downright dull.

I'd rather have a two wheeled ride that I can maneuver through city traffic with a touch of "brio" and wind up on parkways and scenic roads below the three digit speed numbers. Unfortunately, these small displacement sport bikes are usually reserved for other countries.

One reason is that motorcycle licenses are not "staged" in the US. (You've got "learner" and "go for it".) This took me completely by surprise when I finally got my motorcycle license decades ago. You could take the test on a scooter, pass, and buy a race bike. That's ridiculous - and deadly. I barely got over 15mph and second gear during my road test, traveled less than a mile on empty streets, and the most daring part of the test was making figure 8's and circles without putting my foot down. Granted, I knew how to ride (and survive) long before I took the test but it left me thinking "this is wrong". Nobody should be able to ride anything with a crazy horsepower to weight ratio without a serious amount of experience. Its not just for the safety of the rider, but of other people, too. It's not that motorcycles are dangerous. It's inexperienced riders that are dangerous. (To be fair, new drivers scare me silly, too. There should be restrictions there as well.)

This brings me back to these small Ninja's. People may call them "beginner bikes" and that may be so. However, a skilled rider can get a lot out them as well. There's life below the ton mark and the streets and highways are not race tracks. Not that you can't race a Ninja 250 - on the track. People have been tricking out and racing Ninja 250's since the first one landed.

Given a choice between a small displacement motorcycle and a small displacement scooter - I'll take the motorcycle every time. Thanks Kawasaki for keeping a good thing going.

2010 Kawasaki Ninja 250R Review - Motorcycle.com
Kawasaki Ninja 250 On The Track