Motorcycles: the rebel’s vehicle of choice. For the longest time those motorcycles were Harley-Davidsons. But by the ‘80s Harleys had lost their edge, and motorcycles as a whole were hemorrhaging cool. Then Tom Cruise raced a fighter jet on a new bike called “Ninja” in the biggest movie of 1986, and everything changed. The Kawasaki Ninja made motorcycles cool again through a combination of advanced engineering, aggressive design, and killer branding. This two-wheeled speed demon kick-started the sportbike segment, and spurred an intense battle for the title “Fastest Motorcycle in the World” that continues today. Join James Pumphrey for a face-melting ride into the history of the world’s most famous sportbike, the Kawasaki Ninja!