Default 2013 Kawasaki Ninja 250R: First Impression & ride report

They say perfection is difficult to improve upon. Difficult, but not impossible! The Kawasaki Ninja 250R was one such perfect (well, almost!) bike that everyone thought was too good to improve. To its owners, it gave everything that they could expect from a quarter-liter machine, sometimes more than their expectations – case in hand, the brakes that are among the best that your money can buy. The Ninja 250R though didn’t stir a storm in the Indian market, thanks to its steep price tag and our price sensitive market, but it did make its mark and the Indian bikers had a real performance bike in a very long time after the legendary RD350.
So when the rumours of a face-lifted baby Ninja started to appear on the worldwide web, it did become the proverbial talk of the town. And with the expectations were already so high, the folks at Kawasaki had little choice but to come out with something that is as groundbreaking as the previous Ninja was.
We at xBhp got our hands on the newest baby Ninja, the 2013 Kawasaki Ninja 250R, in Philippines a few days back, thanks to the Motorcycle Magazine and Kawasaki Philippines. And boy, did it leave us speechless or what! Here’s our 2 cents on what we think of this bike.

Looks & Styling: The initial official photos of this green baby that were released in the latter half of 2012 didn’t leave any chance for disappointment. What the Kawasaki designers had pulled out was nothing short of a rabbit out of the hat. The 2013 Ninja 250R looked drop-dead gorgeous in pictures and does so in flesh. It’s got sharper looks like that of a supermodel that puts it in the league of the ZX-10Rs looks wise, and perhaps even better. The tank is even more chiselled, and so is the tail, and together they play a big role in giving the bike a very mean look. The rounded exhaust pipe gives way for an all new angular, powder coated, black exhaust pipe with a chrome heat-shield. The new pipe not only looks good, it also sounds a lot better, particularly once you rev the bike past the 5000 RPM mark. The previous singular-body headlight has been done away with and gives way to the angular twin headlight system that vaguely reminds one of its bigger sibling, the Ninja ZX10R. Then there’s the all new digital + analog console instead of the plain jane fully analog unit on the previous 250R. The new unit has a large analog tachometer, a smaller digital speedometer display that also has 2 tripmeters, an odometer and a digital clock too. The bike comes to life with a cool animation on the digital console as you turn on the key. The backlight color is moonlight white. The numbers on the digital unit were clearly visible while riding even during bright daylight. And finally, the baby Ninja also gets the much awaited ‘pass’ light switch that was missing on the older models.

Posted in: Kawasaki,Motor,Ninja