The Ninja at 30

George Orwell had it right in 1984; his timing was just a little off. In 1983, I was playing Army in Germany when some angry jihadists blew up 299 American and French soldiers in Beirut on an otherwise pleasant Sunday morning. I was off post at the time embracing German culture and heard nothing about Beirut until I got back the next day. Nobody knew how to get hold of me, and there were no telescreens blaring from every corner like today. I still feel guilty for not being there on the deadliest day for the Marines since Iwo Jima, but the Army managed to soldier on without me. Big Brother was watching plenty of people at the height of the Cold War in a divided Deutschland, but I wasn’t one of them.

Thirty years later, I can’t sleep unless my iPhone’s right there next to me. I can’t get clean in the shower until I’ve logged onto the www in the morning and slapped down my nut Congressman on Facebook. I can’t get anywhere without Google Maps and GPS to tell me where and how, and I don’t feel safe without the ghetto bird overhead. Is Big Brother watching me? Or am I watching him?

In 1984, the new GPz900 Ninja was the cutting edge of performance, with an all-new liquid-cooled four-cylinder driving its cams from the left side instead of the middle—the better to lean over farther in corners and produce top-end power that put the big air-cooled multis of the day to shame. Even after three decades, the old beast reminds us why Kawasakis used to be thought of as unbreakable but a bit crude: On serial #0001, on loan from the Kawasaki Heritage Hall Museum, black primer shows through the red paint on part of the fairing, and many of the stickers are just that: stuck on. None of it mattered; in 1984, the median Baby Boomer was 29 years old and making decent bank working the second shift at the Budweiser plant in Van Nuys, California, cruising the boulevard after work in Oakley Blades with a mullet for a helmet. When the new bike broke cover on the cover of CW's January '84 edition, the side panels said "GPz900." By the time real bikes made it to the US, that sticker was replaced with one that said "Ninja." Kawasaki marketing's Mike Vaughan's enthusiasm for Shogun, the TV mini-series hit of 1980, created a monster. When Tom Cruise showed up in Top Gun on a Ninja in 1986, it was a frenzy in spite of the fact that Cruise's bikes had all the Kawasaki badging covered because Vaughan made the producers pay for the three Ninjas; demand was exceeding supply, but Cruise insisted on Kawasaki.

We called the Yamaha FJ1100 introduced the same year "the fastest, most competent all-around liter-class sportbike of them all." But when it came time for "10 Best" in 1984, the Kawasaki was it: "This isn't your usual Japanese sportbike… This is a hard-core performance motorcycle aimed directly at the hard-core performance rider."

Why don't we compare the '84 to the current ZX-10R? Here's the thing about the original Ninja: It was hard-core before the core became so hard. Never mind the period hyperbole; your Open-class streetbike of 1984 was also a pretty good daily ride/sport-tourer. The old hausfrau Ninja weighed 546 pounds with half a tank of fuel (2.9 gallons); the new ZX-10R that Superbike World Champion Tom Sykes' bike is based upon is nearly 120 pounds lighter. That's an entire Dani Pedrosa.

So even though the 10R is the current hard-core Kawasaki, the Ninja 1000 (500 pounds with half a tank) is the real spiritual descendant of the original. And although there’s no longer anything revolutionary about it, the new midrange-enhanced 2014 Ninja 1000 brings the thrill right back home. Why did they stop building barely contained superbikes that are comfy to cruise, anyway? The closest competitor is the Suzuki GSX-F1250—70 pounds heavier and not so steamy.

On the new Ninja, the handlebars reach up and into your lap like faithful hound snouts, the hand-adjustable windshield does what it does with zero complexity or extra weight, the seat's wider toward the back and shaped like a human rear end; most people who ride this one come back saying, hey, I could go somewhere on this—nothing hurts. The suspension's firm and supple enough for sport-touring but never jarring, and the new preload adjuster lets you crank it up by hand when you're carrying a load. It's almost a Kawasaki BMW R1200RT but way faster, about 17-percent sportier and 100 pounds lighter.

It's the way-faster part that takes us back to the original and makes the new Ninja stand out: 123 rear-wheel horsepower isn't that much anymore, but 74 pound-feet of torque, courtesy of a new intake cam, still is: 74 is right amongst all the latest Superbikes we compared last August, including the ZX-10R, BMW S1000RR, etc. But while those four-cylinders all make peak torque between 9,000 and 11,000 rpm, the Ninja 1000 serves up the whole burrito at 7,530 rpm. At 80 mph in sixth gear, it's turning about 5,400 rpm. Passing power is not a problem. Its 60–80 mph top-gear roll-on time of 2.9 seconds takes a back seat only to the S1000RR by 0.1 second. (One other bike that does 2.8 would be the ZX-14R.) The trade-off is that the Ninja won't go 185 like the BMW and the 14R, only 151. Most days, that's enough.

And when it comes to powerful motorcycles—sorry, George Orwell—I think having an all-seeing benevolent despot in charge isn’t a bad way to go. The new Ninja 1000 doesn’t get Kawasaki’s latest predictive K-TRIC traction control like the ZX-10R, but its KTRC is remarkably better than nothing in slick conditions, and the addition of standard ABS this year is a definite step forward.

The original Ninja had a balance shaft; so does this one, and the engine idles with that smooth, gnarly rasp we’ve always loved. That’s the only gnarly thing left 30 years after the original. The Candy Lime Green on our bike’s flawless body panels is lustrous and perfect; the fuel tank is functional origami. The optional hard bags designed by Givi might be the best ones we’ve ever used. Sell your car.

Thirty years after 1984, the world’s still going to hell in a hand basket. Pick your greatest fear: government spying, global warming, fluoridated water, Peter Egan’s semi-retirement, bad cell coverage. Who cares? As long as we can still get a few gallons of gas, we’re good.

This new Ninja is the most highly evolved literbike you can buy in these strange times, with just enough Big Brother to make the world a safer place but not enough to make it oppressive. You could hook up a phone charger; we don’t recommend it.