This story is in partnership with Kawasaki Motors.
There’s no denying that Kawasaki’s brand-new supercharged Teryx4/5 H2 side-by-side is a monster. It is, after all, the most powerful side-by-side on sale today with 250 rampaging ponies doing their damndest to escape their confines and scream a supercharged whinny at everyone and everything within earshot. It broke RideApart’s Kyra Sacdalan’s brain when she drove/tamed the foul beast earlier this year.
The name ‘Teryx4/5’ makes a lot of sense. This is a feral prehistoric animal brought to life via modern science. But finding a way to balance the ability that you, I, or anyone with a driver’s license could hop into the Teryx4/5 H2 and go out for a rip without ending up as extinct as its namesake is a tall order. And building something durable enough to shred the dunes, while having all the attributes that put it leagues ahead of its competition, is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
What’s the point of control and comfort if you don’t have the balance of something that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck when you blip the throttle and hear that distinctive supercharged flutter?
But life did, indeed, find a way. And that way was through Kawasaki Motors' own engineers, as well as a small, badass engineering group inside Kawasaki Heavy Industries that helps shape all of the brand’s wildest products and find solutions to ensure Kawasaki is bringing out the best of the best.
Thousands of man-hours went into making sure it wouldn’t go all Jurassic Park and get out of containment, where everyone gets eaten alive. Attention was paid to the comfort, the usability, the tech, and oh so much more. Kawasaki had to make sure every detail was sweated, and that every piece of it would be accessible to anyone, while still maintaining the machine’s animality.
Kawasaki’s breadth of engineering prowess, along with its dedicated engineers, was responsible for the impossibly ludicrous machine that now resides on dealer lots. But that balance wasn’t easy, as Kawasaki’s Takashi Hisamura, the Teryx4/5 H2’s Project Leader, recalls.
“My first thought is that whoever drives [a Teryx4/5 H2] has to have excitement while they’re looking at it, riding it, everything,” Hisamura tells RideApart, adding, “But also where does the excitement happen? It's the dunes, in the desert, in the outside. And who's going to be the people who are going to enjoy this? The family, the driver, and including the whole family, in fact. So it's not just the rider, but also including the family themselves.”
That, however, is a tall order. It not only has to be the fastest, most powerful side-by-side around, but also work for the whole family.
“The other thing is the sound,” Hisamura says, “Sound differentiates us from other competitors. It’s not just another turbo. As you can imagine, by listening to it, it seems like it's alive. I wanted to make the consumers feel that it's something that's alive.”
Obviously, it has to be centered around that bonkers engine that’s very similar to the one in the Kawasaki Ninja H2 superbike. That wasn’t an afterthought, however. “Kawasaki built the Ninja H2’s supercharger from scratch, yes, but then from there, we wanted to do it for a side-by-side, too,” says Hisamura, adding, “We had to kind of start from scratch [again] in a way, as the Teryx4/5 H2 has a completely different nature than the Ninja H2 superbike.”
How do you transfer that tech over when those two are wildly different machines, though, and still have Kawasaki’s legendary reliability?
“As you can imagine, [the Ninja H2 motorcycle] and [Teryx4/5 H2 side-by-side] have completely different layouts. But the advantage of a side-by-side would be the space that you have. For that reason, installing the intercooler was not difficult. The radiator, however, could not be given sufficient surface area due to visibility, styling, and wheel travel clearance requirements, but we were able to solve this by utilizing dual radiators which are assembled into the space in front and behind. A first for Kawasaki, and a first in this segment as far as we know,” states Hisamura. So in that regard, it was actually easier to design the Teryx4/5 H2 than the Ninja H2, while the layout design was not relatively difficult, we spent significant development effort on matching the CVT due to the engine operating range and drive system being different from those of motorcycles.
But here’s where Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ ‘Special Projects Department’ enters the show, as how the team came up with that solution was to go to said engineers for assistance.
“So our parent company is Kawasaki Heavy Industries. And we worked in collaboration with this team, using the base KRX platform, to simulate and confirm which areas required additional strength, flexibility, and whatnot to make it able to withstand the power and the speed of the Teryx4/5 H2 in those locations,” says Hisamura, adding, “The team, however, is not connected to a product like airplanes or robotics (things that Kawasaki has departments for). It's a very special department, which is Research and Development, which focuses only on R&D. But that R&D department doesn't focus on a product, either; it focuses on a problem or a hurdle. So it's not just motorcycles that would go to them or side-by-sides. It could be other departments that would go to that department to come up with a solution.”
He tells RideApart, “It's the Brain of the Brain department.”
Yet, while Kawasaki’s Brain of Brains helped, and the brand’s side-by-side engineers led the project and its design, everything still came down to butts in seats and how the whole package felt from behind the wheel. Comfort, rigidity, power control, and everything had to be ensured by a test driver over hundreds of hours of backwoods adventures.
“After [all the engineering has] been completed, then the human aspect comes in where the test driver really test rides it,” says Hisamura, adding, “The test driver needs to clear if the machine is at par or is acceptable. And until that's done, it's not finished. So it's a combination of the two, if that makes sense.” It does, as even the most advanced engineering simulations can’t tell you whether or not a vehicle like a Teryx4/5 H2 feels good. If it feels like the most powerful side-by-side on the market. If it feels like you can conquer whatever ground you set your sights on. If the customer is going to giggle like an idiot when they first turn the side-by-side on, hear that ludicrous supercharger whine, and blaze off into the distance.
To that end, Hisamura and, indeed, Kawasaki, are happy with the tyrant lizard king they’ve created.
“I'm ecstatic seeing my baby in the world,” says Hisamura, “I’m very, very happy. But what I’m looking forward to is how customers play with it and ride it and how it evolves for the future. Then I can look at my next project on what I should work on, yeah. It’s a continuous evolution of fun.”
Which makes sense, as Kawasaki’s whole motto is “Let the good times roll.”
