The Kawasaki Ninja 650 has always occupied a slightly weird corner of the sportbike world. It's got the fairings, the Ninja badge, the aggressive headlights, and enough visual family resemblance to Kawasaki's ZX machines to look properly sporty in a parking lot. But look a little closer and there was always one thing giving the game away: that decidedly ordinary front end.
For years, the Ninja 650 made do with a conventional telescopic fork and relatively basic two-piston front brake calipers. None of that made it a bad motorcycle. In fact, those simple components fit pretty well with what the Ninja 650 actually is: an approachable, comfortable, everyday middleweight that happens to wear sportbike clothes. But in a market increasingly packed with more capable suspension and increasingly serious-looking hardware, the Ninja's setup was getting hard to ignore.
