About That Ninja H2 SX First Ride….

About That Ninja H2 SX First Ride Story

As the gears of international relations turn, a golden opportunity occasionally gets ground to bits in the mesh. Such is the story of Motorcycle.com’s recently departed world exclusive Kawasaki Ninja H2 SX first ride. We were given an opportunity to sample Kawi’s new sport-touring flagship shortly before the bike was announced as a U.S. model, and we published that ride story and video once it was officially announced for our market. Unfortunately for all of us, it seems other markets around the globe did not look so kindly upon the massive lead that MO obtained, so they probably contacted their respective national distributors who in turn probably contacted the mothership in Japan. It wasn’t long before Kawasaki’s U.S. distributor, KMC, started receiving heavy fire from across the oceans and our editorial phone started ringing…. which brings us to this disappointing void.

Motorcycle.com takes our responsibilities to our readership very seriously which is why we always tell it to you straight, including sharing our negative impressions from first rides along with our excitement over the positives. Likewise, we take our responsibility to the motorcycle industry seriously, and as long as they aren’t asking us to cover-up flaws in a product or otherwise distort our honest impressions, we tend to agree to help them when asked. In this instance, they asked, and out of respect for Kawasaki, we have agreed to temporarily remove our coverage for a few weeks until the rest of the world has a chance to sample the bike. In the meantime, we will continue to work on scoops and exclusive first rides whenever and wherever possible, and you can bet your ass we’ll still be the first publication to have a complete ride review live once the first H2 SX press event gets underway over in Europe. Heck, we might even be able to re-shoot that sub-par first-ride video!