New Kawasaki ZX-10R gets mean (not green) makeover

Kawasaki’s new ZX-10R may have lost the outright power battle with the BMW S1000RR and the handling scrap to Aprilia’s RSV4 APRC but it’s determined to walk away from the tussles head held high in the styling department.

To that end Kawasaki USA’s taken the big Ninja to the ‘king of custom sportsbikes’ Robert Fisher, boss of Florida’s Roaring Toyz, for a long, low and mean makeover.

In spite of its to-hell-with-handling appearance, ex-racer Fisher’s insistent he’s never made a bike that didn’t handle or repay hard riding and says the lairy Zed is still a front-runner, just one that looks better crawling kerbs.

The claim might be hard to credit looking at the elongated single-sided swingarm, 240-section rear tyre and Performance Machine wheels (from Roland Sands’ dad’s firm), but with its straight-through exhaust barking in your face you won’t feel like pushing the point.

Reassuringly, Fisher uses only top grade 6061 T6 Billet aluminum and says he spends months testing his parts on racebikes to ensure each part has the go to match the show.

So if you’ve seen a wild-eyed racer running (at best) mid-pack aboard a lairy superbike with a foot-longer swingarm, that’ll be why.

www.roaringtoyz.com