The Great Kawasaki-Bimota Experiment continues, with what appears to be the production-ready version of the Bimota Tera now appearing at EICMA.
Bimota teased this bike at the show last year, but now that we see it in the flesh, we must say that it’s most impressive. We certainly didn’t expect to see that trick Tesi front end on an adventure bike—but here it is! The rest of the chassis is similarly clever, all engineered to take advantage of that anti-drive front suspension. The front end’s actual spring/compression/rebound duties are held down by a TTX36 shock from Ohlins, and in back, there’s a similar unit—but if you want to pay extra, Bimota says you can upgrade to semi-active Marzocchi suspension bits.
Bimota says the rest of the chassis is an evolution of the TesiH2 design, with a frame made of machined aluminum alloy plates. They use carbon-fibre as well, and of course there’s plenty of that in the bodywork.
The machine has the same supercharged engine that Kawasaki uses in the H2 hyperbike. It should make around 200 horses at the crank, and more impressively, about 100 lb-ft of torque. We’ve become accustomed to this high-performance inline four because it’s been on the market for a while, but perhaps we should be less jaded and remember it’s a powerhouse of a powerplant!
The braking system relies on radial-mount four-piston Brembo Stylema calipers up front, with dual semi-floating 330 mm discs. In back , there’s a single 220 mm disc with a two-piston caliper. The brakes are tied together with Kawasaki’s lean-sensitive ABS system, and obviously the bike gets the rest of the high-end Kawi electronics package as well: traction control, launch control, cruise control and so on.
Bimota doesn’t list a curb weight for the bike but does say it has a surprisingly large 22-liter fuel tank. That’s something you expect on a serious travel bike, not a toy, which is what many people would say the Tera is, at its core. With 17-inch cast rims, this bike is not made for rough off-road riding. But it would certainly be interesting as a tourer on maintained roads, especially with the semi-active suspension option.
Not that you’re likely to ever get a chance to ride it! While Bimota’s bikes should theoretically be importable to Canada, since they should have the same emissions profile as their Kawasaki counterparts, good luck finding one at a dealership. Bimota’s business model is selling weirdo built-in-Europe bikes to Euro riders, and they are unlikely to target the frozen wasteland of Canuckistan anytime soon.
