With the horsepower race going on, it’s pretty hard for an ordinary — read: rational — adventure bike to get any love these days. Ducati’s top-of-the-line is a 170-plus horsepower V4. KTM’s 1290 boasts almost as much power except from two fewer cylinders. Even Harley’s Pan America is a powerhouse. Hell, BMW’s GS is in the horsepower race. And what’s this I hear about Honda patenting a supercharger for its woefully-powered Africa Twin so that it can keep up with the hyper-horsepowered Joneses? What’s a lowly 118-horsepower Kawasaki Versys to do? Especially when Team Green — they of the screaming two-stroke triples, hypersonic ZZR1400s and supercharged H2s — is, itself, world-renowned for outrageous power.
The only thing to do, I suppose, is to brand the big Versys as the comfy tourer of the lot.
To that end, the only Versys being sold as a 2023 model is an LT SE, the full-boat model that is blessed with Kawasaki’s Electronic Control Suspension. It’s essentially the same semi-active suspension that blesses the supercharged H2 SX SE, and I wasn’t a fan of the way it was applied to the sort-of sports-tourer. Not because the electronically adjustable suspension was bad, but because the previous SX’s stock suspension was so damnably good. So good, in fact, that it rendered
