Page 29 - 2022-08-01 RiDE

FIRST RIDE BIMOTA KB4

things you need

5 to know about…

Bimota’s lovely-looking, Kawasaki-engine’d new KB4

1 LIKE A SPORTS- 4 HANDLING IS

TOURER... ONLY
FROM HEAVEN
BETTER The beautiful composite chassis
With the 140bhp, 1043cc motor from the consists of an upper main trellis frame in
Z1000SX at its heart, the new KB4 could chrome-moly steel tubing, mated to twin
be described as a sports tourer. But that billet-machined aluminium engine plates,
would be doing the sleek and stylish with the engine itself as a fully-stressed
Rimini rip-snorter an injustice. Think more chassis component. Fully adjustable 43mm
Super Tourer… in superhero clothing Öhlins FG R&T NIX30 upside-down forks and
a three-piece aluminium swingarm machined
from separate billets of Anticorodal aircraft
alloy operating a fully-adjustable Öhlins
2 A MODE FOR TTX36 shock via a progressive-rate link,
make the handling simply sublime
EVERY REASON…
ALMOST!
The KB4’s 1043cc Euro5-compliant motor
delivers user-friendly horsepower via two
power modes: Full, which is as per the
label and Low, which has a softer delivery
with output limited to 105bhp. These are
paired to four different riding modes —
Sport, Road, Rain and a customisable
Rider setting — with three different
settings for the traction-control system

5 IT’S LIGHT AND

EASY TO STOP
The bodywork is all carbon
fibre, resulting in a dry weight of just
189kg. That’s stopped via a Brembo
brake package consisting of twin 320mm
floating front discs — downsized from the
330mm items on the Tesi H2 — gripped by
radially-mounted Monoblock four-pot
calipers, with a single 220mm rear disc
and twin-piston caliper. Kawasaki’s own
dual-channel ABS has been adapted to
the Bimota

THE FACTS

Price £30,000 (est)

Engine 1043cc DOHC inline four, 4v per
cyl, l/c
3 YOU SIT Transmission Six speed, chain

VERY PRETTY
Sitting on the new Bimota’s Power 140bhp @ 10,000rpm
rather incongruous-looking tan leather Torque 82ft·lb @ 8000rpm
seat pad, you immediately realise this Fuel capacity 19.5 litres
is not quite the head-down, bum-in-the- Seat height 810mm
air weapon it threatened to be. Thanks
to the quite-low 810mm seat height Wheelbase 1390mm
(adjustable over a 16mm range) you Weight 194kg (kerb, claimed)
sit in the KB4 rather than on it, with a
relatively upright riding position, Rider aids ABS, cornering traction Pictures Kel Edge
thanks partly to the quite wide-spread control, cruise, modes, quickshifter
clip-on ‘bars

SEPTEMBER 2022 29