Kawasaki: a new 650cc supercharged bike is coming?

Kawasaki – Japanese magazine Young Machine claims that Kawasaki will have a new 650cc supercharged motorcycle on display at the Tokyo Motor Show, scheduled for late October.

Details on this new Kawasaki are still scarce at the moment, but the report says that the new two-wheeler will be called Ninja S2 and the image shown by the magazine presents us with a new supercharged Kawasaki with two inline cylinders like the 1000cc of the H2, but based on the ER6 engine. Instead, other Japanese sources report that the next supercharged Kawasaki will be a 600cc four-cylinder derived from the ZX-6R.

Like H2, the new Kawasaki is shown with a trellis frame and intake pipe, to power the supercharger mounted behind the engine, in the foreground running along the left side. Is Young Machine's hypothesis a real one or is it just conjecture? We'll find out soon. The new Kawasaki sounds like an attractive prospect, of course, especially if the price is going to be cheaper than the H2.

At the beginning of August, Young Machine also told us about the imminent arrival of a new one Suzuki Strom 250 (described as the G-Strom 250, rather than a V-Strom, presumably due to the parallel engine rather than the V-twin engine), based on the Inazuma 250, which could represent a rational expansion of the range, and a new Kawasaki Versys 250 based on the engine and chassis of the Z250/Ninja 250. Who knows if the Japanese magazine is really revealing some truly exciting new models.