Bimota Tera H2 Review – 200hp Supercharged Crossover

• 200hp supercharged Kawasaki H2 power wrapped in an exotic Bimota chassis
• Radically revised Tesi hub-centre steering delivers remarkable braking performance and vastly improved front-end feel
• Alan Cathcart reckons it could be one of the most versatile motorcycles he’s ever ridden 

A 200hp supercharged crossover with hub-centre steering could only come from Bimota. Alan Cathcart discovers the Tera H2 might also be the bike that finally fulfils the Tesi concept’s extraordinary potential.

Ever since Bimota was founded over half a century ago in 1973 by future design guru Massimo Tamburini and his mates, the Italian trophy brand has been a byword for sporting prowess via avant-garde design. So, the idea of an adventure tourer displaying the Bimota name on its side would have been about as likely as Ferrari making a station wagon.

Except Enzo’s mob went and did just that with the FF, and now Bimota has launched the Tera H2 as the fourth bike to join its line-up since Kawasaki rescued the marque in 2019 from the Last Chance Saloon, in which it had taken up almost permanent residence.

Moreover, in best Bimota style, the Tera does adventure differently by utilising the firm’s iconic Tesi hub-centre format, which current CEO Pierluigi Marconi first conceived back in the early 1980s.

This equipped the Ducati desmoquattro-engined Tesi 1D, of which 417 examples were built from 1990-95. More recently, the concept was revived in 2020 as the first new model under Kawasaki ownership, with the Bimota Tesi H2 powered by the Japanese firm’s iconic supercharged 998cc Ninja H2 inline-four motor. All 250 examples of this limited-edition model have now been delivered to customers.

That’s left Bimota’s alternative chassis technology baton to be picked up by the Tera H2.

Supercharged Heart

The Tera uses the slightly softer version of the Kawasaki engine found in the H2 SX sports tourer and Z H2 naked models, producing 200hp/147kW at 11,000rpm, and is fitted with a good-sounding, good-looking Akrapovič carbon-wrap slip-on silencer.

But, as with any forced-induction motor, its key product is torque, with the Tera’s engine delivering a humungous 137Nm at 8500rpm, just three-quarters of the way to redline.

That’s enough to propel the 215kg machine from 0-100km/h in just 3.5 seconds, making it by some way the fastest and most muscular adventure-style model yet created by any manufacturer – including Special K itself!

The H2 Kawasaki’s intake and exhaust systems, wiring loom, lights, engine management ECU and all its electronics were also adopted on the Tera, meaning Bimota could use the Kawasaki type approval for these elements. So, a large part of the homologation was already completed, saving lots of time as well as money in bringing the Tera H2 to market.

The full suite of Kawasaki electronics making that massive performance user-friendly has therefore been transferred in its entirety to the Tera, including a ride-by-wire throttle offering three riding modes – Sport, Road and Rain – a two-way quickshifter, nine-stage traction control, an Öhlins electronic steering damper, Bosch six-axis IMU, launch control, KIBS intelligent ABS and more.

Bimota Does Adventure Differently

The Tera H2 is the first model with any kind of off-road pretensions to bear the Bimota badge, apart from the short-lived, 16-off DBx introduced in 2013. Its failure to attract customers seemingly cemented Bimota’s aversion to doing it in the dirt – until the prototype Tera concept model appeared at the 2023 EICMA Milan Show.

This came complete with knobbly tyres from Turkish brand Anlas with a speed rating of 270km/h, but with a tread pattern suitable for dual-purpose use.

Since entering hand-built production last year in Bimota’s Rimini factory, more than 100 examples of the Tera have been built, retailing for €41,000 in Italy including 22% IVA tax, and it’s available globally exclusively through Kawasaki dealers.

“It’s the first biposto Tesi-type model we’ve ever made,” states a proud Pierluigi Marconi, “so the first with room for a passenger, and also the first supercharged Crossover model from any company, with ultra-high-speed performance potential.

“For us, it’s a Crossover, not an Adventure bike, which implies serious off-road capability. This is why we chose 17in wheels – our intention is for the Tera to be used to travel mainly on the highway and sometimes a little bit of soft off-road – which means we must have a tyre which is good for both.

“You can use the Tera to go to work, you can ride it in the city, enjoy taking your wife out in the country with it, or make a longer trip with the accessory luggage, maybe partly on unmade roads. It’s a bike to enjoy anywhere – what we call una moto polivalente, a true all-rounder.”

And the origins of the Tera name?

“‘Tera’ stands for TEsi con Regolazione dell’Altezza, meaning a Tesi with Height Adjustment, which makes it suitable for off-road use. We completely redesigned the front swingarm, the steering linkage and the front hub, so that compared to the Tesi it allows 8° more steering radius – a total of 35°.

“This solution allows having the handlebar directly connected to the front wheel using a multilink solution, which makes it more sensitive to road irregularities and braking, as well as communicating more directly with the rider.”

Alan and the Tesi

I had a particular interest in marking the Tera’s card by riding it to see for myself how well Marconi’s drastic front-end redesign works.

For in 1991-93 I raced the factory Bimota Tesi 1DR for three seasons in Europe, Japan and the USA, experiencing a whole gamut of experiences in essentially pushing the boundaries of hub-centre two-wheeled design in a hands-on fashion.

These ranged from near-terminal tank-slappers on Daytona’s bumpy banking, to cruising completely at ease around the outside of other V-twin Superbikes themselves performing a similar tango through the then-uneven Curva Grande at Monza. Or coping with bump steer essentially due to overstressed suspension, yet stuffing it up the inside of other bikes into tight turns on short circuits like Tsukuba in Japan, once I’d reprogrammed my mind to accept that I could indeed brake miles later than them because the Tesi system separates suspension travel from steering.

Except, I then had to pay attention in longer races to wearing out the front tyre, because braking hard on the angle wasn’t what it was designed for you to do – we ended up using harder 125GP rear tyres on the Tesi’s front wheel to counter that.

So, having ridden more miles on road and track on Tesi-framed motorcycles than anyone else beyond Bimota test rider Gianluca Galasso, I had some questions to ask the Tera test bike I borrowed from Kawasaki UK during the long 330km day I spent riding it in every kind of situation, from high-speed motorways to low-speed country roads, from hard-packed green lanes off-road to city streets both with and without traffic jams.

Specifically, I wanted to know if the Tera is indeed tailored to all terrains, as any truly versatile adventure model should be.

Reinventing Hub-Centre Steering

In designing the Tera, Marconi has completely rationalised his original hub-centre Tesi design, which saw ‘my’ 1DR employing two separate long, U-shaped Omega aluminium chassis spars milled from solid billet, which sandwiched its Ducati V-twin motor to provide pivots for the near-mirror-image swingarms at either end of the bike.

On the Tera H2, he’s done away with those large frame spars and used the shorter Kawasaki inline motor as a fully stressed chassis component to which both front and rear suspension are attached via smaller alloy plates, with a structural carbon-fibre seat subframe.

As before, there are twin swingarms front and rear, with the front one pivoting in twin aluminium plates bolted either side to the front of the engine, and the rear one in the engine crankcases, as on the Ninja H2.

There’s no welding anywhere on the Bimota – each swingarm leg comprises three laser-cut aluminium sections bonded together to form the structure, with the front unit’s two halves joined together via a carbon-fibre bridge.

Damping is supplied by a pair of fully adjustable Öhlins TTX36 nitrogen gas-charged shocks mounted side-by-side in front of the rear wheel, with remote preload adjusters stacked on the right side of the seat subframe. Marzocchi electronic suspension is available, but only as an extra-cost option.

The front wheel’s rear-mounted Öhlins is actuated via a long, sturdy rod running off the bottom left side of the front swingarm, operating the shock via a falling-rate progressive link. This delivers 114mm of front wheel travel, while the rear suspension is more conventional, with a rising-rate link giving 145mm of travel.

These figures increase significantly to 145mm/165mm with the optional Marzocchi semi-active system.

The ride height is quickly adjustable over a huge 30mm range, says Marconi, and the linkage means there are no trail changes involved in doing so, with the whole design maintaining consistent geometry under braking.

The front wheel is no longer steered as on ‘my’ Tesi via a series of often right-angle links which dialled out feel from the front tyre by the time it reached the steering head – there’s now a set of tie-bars and knuckle joints to turn the front wheel more directly.

This juggling with component layout delivers a more compact, centralised mass than on earlier Tesi-type streetbikes, where the L-twin Ducati engine format was always a challenge in achieving this route to more composed handling.

Furthermore, it hasn’t been obtained at the expense of weight distribution, with the Tera H2’s claimed 215kg half-dry weight – including oil and water, but no fuel – split 52.5/47.5% frontwards at rest. With an 80kg rider aboard, it’s an optimum 50/50%, says Marconi.

And that weight does include the pretty meaty centrestand fitted as standard, which certainly underlines the Tera’s adventure credentials.

The wheelbase is 1455mm – 10mm more than the Tesi H2, but just 15mm less than the stock Ninja H2’s. You can’t afford to shorten the stride too much on a bike with this much torque if you ever want to have the front wheel in contact with planet Earth under the kind of acceleration this engine delivers!

The specially made OZ forged-aluminium wheels carry Brembo’s latest braking hardware, with twin 330mm semi-floating discs on the 3.50in front gripped by four-pot Stylema one-piece radial calipers, and the 5.50in rear wheel carrying a large 260mm disc with twin-piston caliper.

The Tera is clothed in purposeful-looking carbon bodywork conceived in-house by Bimota’s stalwart progettista Enrico Borghesan, with the 19-litre fuel tank centrally positioned above the crank.

The massive wings that are a standout feature of the Tesi H2 are replaced on the Tera by a pair of much more discreet fixed aerodynamic front winglets which promote high-speed stability, says Marconi.

The 174mm ground clearance is greater than on the Tesi H2, but not exactly spacious by off-road standards.

Time to Ride

However, the first thing you notice after climbing aboard the Tera H2 and nestling snugly into the well-designed 830mm-high seat – which allowed me at 180cm in stature to put both feet flat on the ground at a stoplight – is the more rational and far more relaxed riding stance compared to its Tesi sister.

It’s really comfortable and relatively spacious thanks to the adjustable footrests and handlebar. This one-piece taper-section aluminium item just ‘falls to hand’, in best road tester cliché – but it really did, though if not I could have rotated it on the clamps in either direction.

You sit fairly upright, but are well protected by the three-position adjustable screen. While tall, this looks slightly vestigial in terms of width, but a 110km stint riding on the M40 to Warwickshire proved it gave excellent protection even to my shoulders for someone of my height, running at 120km/h on the easy-to-use cruise control with an eye open for blue lights and white vans.

However, you soon learn that the Tera is eye candy for heaps of car drivers, who’ll watch you cruise past them, then speed up to overtake you again before slowing down to keep pace while they and any passengers all gawp at the Bimota.

Same thing parking up anywhere – every time I came back to the bike there’d be people staring at it, until by the end of my day with the Tera I had my spiel down good explaining what it was.

Hope Bimota pay commission on the introductions. No? Oh, well – I had a nice ride.

The Tesi Done Right?

No – it was more than nice, it was truly memorable.

This magnificent engine and the Tesi design concept were made for each other, but only because of the significant changes Pilu Marconi has made to the design format.

Back when I raced the Tesi, the biggest challenge we had in getting it to handle was high-speed stability. Often for no apparent reason, the Tesi tango would kick in, sometimes even on fast straights, if I hit a bump or ripple in the road surface even slightly leaned over.

The lack of front suspension travel was most likely the key reason, though sometimes it started from the rear, in which case a fix was even harder to discern.

But get lucky – and I’ll admit that back then it was often a case of exactly that – and the huge advantage the Tesi concept delivered under braking was like two-wheeled nirvana, allowing you to stop far later than anyone else and trail-brake hard on the angle into the apex of a turn without the suspension freezing, or the front wheel folding.

Everything just kept on working as it should.

Those assets are all present and correct on the Tera H2, as I discovered riding on one of my favourite bits of racer road outside Warwick.

First, though, I’d experienced the massive thrill of exploiting the H2 SX supercharged motor’s performance to the max down a quiet, straight piece of road, which reminded me what a fantastic performance aid supercharging is in motorcycle terms – no throttle lag, no significant weight penalty, relatively few heat issues, just humungous acceleration that’s deeply, deeply thrilling.

And transposing this performance to the Tesi concept, as here, not only let me lay that power down so satisfyingly directly exiting a bend, but also stop so late, hard and well at the other end of the straight, with total stability.

In doing so, I noticed that the trademark flat braking of the Tesi 1DR I used to race has been replaced on the Tera H2 with just an itsy bit of front-end dive – just enough to give the impression you’re actually stopping, which wasn’t always evident on the old bike!

This was one of the hardest things to get used to on the 1DR, and while riding the Tera does still require you to reprogramme your senses to suit, and adjust to doing things differently aboard such a bike, as you must, it’s not as big a step on the Tera H2 as it was before.

That’s partly because of the sense of actually stopping that Marconi has dialled into the new bike, and also because of the much better feedback from the front tyre that his new front-end design delivers.

Back then, I’m afraid I fell off more than once without any warning, and worst of all without even knowing why, even after racing the bike for over a season. Feedback from the front tyre was very poor, thanks to the convoluted steering linkage and minimal front suspension travel.

That’s all history on the Tera, which has much softer and more compliant front suspension than ‘Back Then’, with 114mm of wheel travel versus 80mm in the old days.

This not only delivered good ride quality over country road surfaces, but also eliminated another of the biggest problems I used to have to contend with on the Tesi 1DR: bump steer caused by the flawed front suspension compliance.

This has been completely addressed on the Tera, resulting in a bike which not only goes where you point it, but isn’t deflected from the trajectory you’ve chosen.

And this in turn means you can not only use those magnificent Brembos to brake later and harder than anything else in the marketplace, always with heaps of feel, but you won’t be deflected from your chosen path because the suspension will now soak up any bumps or other road rash you may encounter along the way.

There’s more wheel travel than before, but it’s also much better controlled.

Even grabbing the brakes mid-corner to scrub off some speed because you misjudged how tight the turn was has no effect beyond stopping harder – even if there’s a bump on the apex.

The Tera just shrugs this off, hugs your chosen line, and the Anlas front tyre keeps on gripping.

Indeed, I honestly found nothing to complain about with the Anlas tyres, especially the front, which I did my best to subject to cruel and unusual punishment.

I did not feel the semi-knobbly tread moving about under heavy braking, nor did I suffer any loss of front-end grip, which was both constant and excellent. And the insistent nature of the Kawasaki engine’s acceleration out of a turn didn’t lead to any strife with rear-end grip either, nor did their tread patterns make either tyre drum noisily at freeway speeds.

Call me contented.

Instead, the Bimota Tera is a bike on which you’ll soon discover the mindset you must adopt to get the best out of a hub-centre motorcycle.

Which is: hold the ’bars lightly and don’t be afraid to stay off the brakes until what seems suicidally late.

Then, when you do eventually decide to stop, don’t think twice about grabbing a big handful of front brake and squeezing the lever hard as you lean into the apex of the turn, while still scrubbing off speed.

The separation of steering from suspension functions on a bike like this is the biggest asset of hub-centre front ends – only you must first convince yourself that you CAN trail-brake so deep into turns, then do it!

This is a motorcycle which not only delivers a thrilling level of performance that only the bike which donated its engine to it can match – but it does so in a way that’s completely unique in today’s marketplace.

Worth waiting 30 years for? You bet – finally, this bike is the Tesi done right.

At last….

What About the Dirt?

OK – but this is supposed to be an Adventure tourer, so does it have any pretensions at off-road capability?

I’ll admit to riding it only a short way along a loose-surfaced lane I know well outside Stratford-on-Avon, after switching the riding mode to Rain.

Let’s just say that, with my concerns about returning their sole demo bike in the country to Kawasaki UK in more or less the same condition as when I picked it up, the Tera seemed quite capable of fending for itself OK away from tarmac.

As a bike at home on gravel tracks or Kiwi gravel roads? Pass – I’ll wait for someone more expert than me to evaluate that, though it certainly has the potential to handle what Marconi calls ‘soft off-road’ stretches OK.

A Bimota You Could Actually Live With

However, the Tera’s dual-purpose capability is really beside the point – call it an optional extra, for its all-round excellence as a road ride comes clearly to the fore after a couple of hundred miles aboard it.

Indeed, the Tera is as much fun to ride slowly as going fast. It’s a smooth, refined and relaxed cruiser when you want to admire the scenery or just chill out, which readily transforms into an effortless high-speed mile-eater when necessary.

But if thrills are what you’ve decided to look for today, the Tera can be transformed at just the flick of your right wrist into a rowdy, tumultuous attack on your senses, to the accompaniment of that trademark muted whine from the supercharger responsible for delivering this extreme performance.

It’s a bike which will devour corners when the urge takes you, attacking a series of flowing curves or hairpin turns with composure, yet unrequited appetite.

This may well be the most truly versatile motorcycle I’ve ever ridden, an uber-enjoyable real-world ride that’s eager to thrill in everyday use.

Bimota’s mantra since its foundation has always been about building uber-sportbikes for discerning customers with deep pockets, which offer extreme levels of performance in an uncompromising manner.

But could its new Tera Crossover model’s existence be pointing the Italian boutique brand in a different direction for long-term sustainability?

Only the market will decide……

Contributing Editor

Alan Cathcart

Alan Cathcart is one of the most respected motorcycle journalists in the world, with more than 50 years’ experience testing, racing and reporting on motorcycles at the highest level. A former racer turned writer, he has ridden everything from factory MotoGP and World Superbike machines to rare homologation specials and pre-production models long before they reached the public. Renowned for his technical depth and historical knowledge, Alan combines engineering insight with real-world riding experience in a way few can match. His long-standing relationships with manufacturers and race teams have given him unique access to some of the most important motorcycles of the modern era. Alan’s work is characterised by detailed analysis, mechanical clarity and context drawn from decades inside the paddock — making every test not just a ride, but an education.