The name is Danger, Duke Danger. Sitting astride the machine on which he would get pegged for speeding later that very day, Duke rattled off some eyebrow-raising results during our performance testing.
When the Hayabusa arrived on scene its top speed of 190-some-mph started making some politicians around the world nervous. Euro safety-crats coerced the manufacturers to limit top speeds of production motorcycles to 186 mph since the 2000 model year. This fact is a heartbreaker for some people, but it really doesn't take anything away from these bikes which offer unparalleled levels of power and acceleration.
If you have an insatiable need for speed, we are here to tell you exactly how much time and precisely how fast you will be going in order to reach your destination, if it's under a mile from the house. Cue the Mozart-inspired intro, its Danger time.
Everyone knows the Hayabusa is capable of posting amazing acceleration numbers, but we had never officially recorded a single high-speed pass on the bike and only a half-dozen runs at the drag strip, so we were anxious to get the data from Duke's test runs. We had turned quite a few passes on the
ZX-14 (and had it dang-near tapped on the banks of Las Vegas Motor Speedway), so we knew it was faster than hell. At long last it was finally time to find out just what they both are capable of with one fast rider at the controls and no lights or dial-in times to muddle the outcome.
A quick look at our acceleration chart and you can see that the Hayabusa s dominating reign over drag racing could be at an end.
After coming up on the short end of the 'unofficial' quarter-mile contest with BC at the controls, the ZX-14 was primed to put the
Hayabusa in its place. And it did. Duke's best corrected pass on the Busa was a 9.85 at 149.8 mph - and that was set with just four runs for each bike. Damn near 150 mph in less than 10 seconds is plain crazy, but the ZX was even faster. Kawasaki engineered the ZX-14 with straight-line performance in mind, and it paid off in this showdown. It ran an impressive 9.65 at 153.2 mph, only a couple of tenths off the best corrected time (9.46) Duke set during the ZX's press introduction in Las Vegas where he made at least 20 passes.
And the acceleration train doesn't stop at 150. Although the Hayabusa begins to narrow the gap to the ZX after 170 mph, the Kawasaki arrives at 180 mph a half-second ahead of the
Suzuki: 18.90 seconds vs. 19.42. Both bikes kept accelerating to a true 184 mph (even if the speedos were reading well above that mark) but stopped short of 185 due to the ECU programming restrictions. In reality, there's not a big difference in acceleration times, but in a world where success is judged a quarter mile at a time, the Ninja comes out on top. Advantage:
Kawasaki.
Final Analysis
When the smoke cleared, the riot police returned to headquarters, and the orphans stopped weeping, it was time for the victor of this epic saga to claim its place at the top of the food chain.
For our first ever zero-180 graph, the ZX reached the mark a half-second quicker at 18.90 seconds to the Busa's 19.42.
On the dyno the ZX drew first blood with a 13 horsepower and 9-lb-ft advantage in the motor war. On our sport-touring ride the Busa redeemed itself and pulled off a draw, which meant the final decision would be made on the long straight road. The
Hayabusa started things off with a near knockout punch at the dragstrip but the pure numbers without taking the rider-ability into play was the final factor. The real-world performance numbers attained from our Vbox data-acquisition system at our top-secret testing facility ultimately decided the winner.
"For what is the quickest-accelerating street-legal vehicle ever sold to the public, the ZX-14 can be a docile plaything," muses Duke Danger. "Keep the revs low and it's a Gentlemen's Express kind of machine, suave and effortless. That said, the blue bomber will positively take your breath away when you give it the reins, compressing time and space with a force unequalled from anything with a license plate. It lunges forward with a ferocity that makes even a speed junkie nervous."
After seven years of ruling the streets, the Hayabusa has been deposed by the more-powerful and better-refined Kawasaki ZX-14. The big Ninja took a clear win in two out of three categories, so we must anoint the 2006 Kawasaki ZX-14 Ninja as the new king of the street.
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