The Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R will debut on July 10

The Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R finally has an arrival date, sort of. According to Kawasaki’s Indonesian YouTube channel, the quarter-litre pocket rocket launches in that country on July 10.

The next big question is, how long until the rest of the world gets the bike? And, will we ever get this machine in Canada?

If you haven’t been paying attention to this bike so far, you might wonder why we’d even care. Surely, after decades of the Ninja 250, Ninja 300 and Ninja 400, the new 250 can’t be much to get excited about? 

Take a closer look and you’ll see, yes—this machine does have a lot of promise. All the way back to Kawasaki’s GPZ305, its parallel-twin entry-level have been affordable fun; the more recent 300 and 400 models have been extremely competent, offering ABS, fuel injection and other modern features. But, those larger bikes are unavailable to customers in some countries, due to engine capacity limits. So, we get the ZX-25R, offering race-bred performance in the 250cc bracket.

Instead of a budget-friendly parallel twin engine, the ZX-25R will have a high-revving four-cylinder, hitting the 17,000 rpm mark in stock form. Supposedly, the bike will make between almost 50 horsepower at the crank. Combine that with low weight and sharp handling, and this should be plenty of fun at the track, or in the twisties.

We’ve received no indication the ZX-25R is coming to Canada, and most likely, it isn’t. From what we’ve seen on the interwebz, pricing would likely be well over $10,000 (maybe close to $15k!). That’s a hard sell, when you can buy a faster 600 for about the same money.