Bimota are back
Few manufacturers have made such consistently wonderful bikes as Bimota. And few marques have consistently been in cash crisis as often as Bimota. Now, with Kawasaki backing them, there are new machines...
hat does the name Bimota mean to you? High-class chassis, with innovative design and beautiful finish? Or just another flaky Italian company, with patchy build quality and precarious financial security? Quite probably both. Bimota owners take the rough with the smooth – they know ownership won’t be easy. But, what machines they are.
Even the supposed duds are firm favourites with fans – the Mantra, with its Elephant Man looks is a sweet-handling, high-class alternative to the Monster 900 it shares an engine with.
A few years ago, the firm appeared to be dying a quiet death. Securing engines, as well as overcoming the time and money-consuming hurdles of homologating bikes for road use, was a struggle for an independent company making bikes in such small numbers (in the hundreds).
Bimota’s fortunes were turned on their head in 2019, when Kawasaki bought 49.9% of the firm, bringing full technical support. While design and production remains in Bimota’s home town of Rimini.
The first model from the collaboration is the Tesi H2, combining Bimota’s signature hub-steer chassis with Kawasaki’s flagship supercharged engine. The KB4 follows that up: styled with a nod to the KB1/KB2/KB3 models from 40 years ago, using the Ninja 1000SX sports touring motor. The PS is at Autodromo di Modena, to find out what these modern Bimotas are about.
THE TESI H2
Kawasaki’s ‘regular’ H2, and track-only H2R, are impressive enough in engine terms, but the chassis is quite conventional, and a little lacking if lighter, sharper naturally-aspirated sportsbikes are your reference point.
Freeing the H2 platform from budgetary constraints (which still exist even on bikes selling for close-on £30k) and introducing the sophistication only possible in limited production runs creates something very special. There is no compromise, anywhere. The engine, electronics and supplementary components supplied by Kawasaki are top-line anyway, and Bimota has matched those with the very best of the Tesi concept, plus their eye for style and detail. It’s the most outrageous over-the-counter motorcycle ever sold.
It needs to be: they’re asking £60k for each of the 250-bike run. While Kawasaki have just announced the 2023 H2R at £50k, with KYB forks, ordinar
