Let’s face it, Rs 4.69 lakh is plenty of money to fork out for a middle-weight, twin-cylinder sports bike. So there’s got to be something special with the new Kawasaki Ninja 400, that’s just been launched in India. Is there?
The Kawasaki Ninja 400 is a middle-weight sports bike that will be imported in CKD (completely knocked down) form and assembled at the company’s plant in Chakan near Pune.
For that money, you get a parallel-twin, liquid-cooled 399 cc motor that puts out 49 PS of power at 10,000 rpm and 38 Nm of torque, mated to a six-speed transmission. The Ninja 400 gets single discs in front and at the rear, with ABS as an option.
It is a fully-faired motorcycle in typical Ninja Series styling. The dominant colour scheme as earlier is green. The Ninja 400 sports a trellis style chassis, which is similar to the more powerful Kawasaki H2. The cuts and curves are quite sharp, similar again to its bigger sibling.
However, is the Ninja 400 value for money? Well, if you go just by cubic capacity it doesn’t seem great value as you could get bikes with larger engine capacity for nearly a third of the price. But, of course, they aren’t really in the same league.
Take the Bajaj Dominar for instance. It matches the Ninja 400 on cubic capacity, but with a sticker price of Rs 1.42 lakh to Rs 1.60 lakh for its variants. The Dominar, however, has a single-cylinder 400 cc liquid-cooled engine that it shares with the KTM 390 Duke, putting out 35 bhp of power.
If it’s power you are looking at, you could also take a look at the KTM Duke 390 or its sportier cousin, the RC 390, which are priced between Rs 2.2 lakh and Rs 2.6 lakh. That’s still about half of what the Ninja 400 costs. Sure, these are not twin-cylinder bikes. The RC 390 puts out 43 bhp of power and 35 Nm of torque.
So is an extra cylinder, sharp sports bike styling and about 6 bhp more power worth the extra cash? Not quite. But then, it’s the price you pay for exclusivity.
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