1. Connie/GTR14 will be delivered (maybe) in August. That's too late for me.
2. No hard data on weight/power ratio yet
3. Likelyhood of severe teething problems increases with the lack of info this close to the originally-announced release (see the K1200S affaire)
1) with the winters we're having this shouldn't be a problem
2) I'm with you here. If the GTR doesn't have considerable more hp's than the FJR I will even consider buying the -cheaper- FJR
3) I trust Kawi in this. The very new ZX-12R and e.g. the ZZR1400 were launched without -big- problems.
1.) If you intend to sell an existing bike yourself, you won't get as much for it in the late summer or fall. If you have the space in your garage, go ahead and buy the C-14, but wait until next spring to sell the older bike. If you have two bikes to sell like I do (XX and FJR), then one possible strategy would be to test ride the C-14 to see if you want to buy it, and if you are convinced that you want to buy it, go ahead and sell one of the two bikes in the late summer, then wait until next spring to sell the other one and buy the C-14.
2.) The weight/power ratio is a critical consideration, but the logic, whereby it makes sense to decide at the present not to buy the bike at a later date because the information that you would need to make an informed decision at that later date is not presently available, escapes me. Unless, that is, you were trying to decide between buying something else right away vs. waiting patiently to find out whether the C-14 is even a bike that you would prefer. That is the only scenario where that logic makes sense to me, and in that scenario, it makes perfect sense. Additionally, it seems highly unlikely to me that the difference in acceleration between the FJR and the C-14 will be adequate to justify a preference of one over the other. While I am hoping that the high-speed acceleration of the C-14 will be a tad better than it is with the FJR, that isn't the principal reason that I am keen on the idea of replacing the FJR (and the XX) with the C-14. Principally, I hope (and fully expect) that the C-14's engine will be inordinately less buzzy than the FJR's engine, which I find excessive and bothersome.
3.) It does not make sense to me that the delay in delivery should be interpreted as an indication that there will be teething problems. Nor should the delay be interpreted as an indicator that there will not be teething problems. The delay just doesn't tell us anything at all about the likelihood of new-model problems. If the K1200S had 1st-year problems that were corrected in the 2nd year, that is useful information in the sense that it tells us that it is sometimes smarter to wait until the 2nd year, but it still isn't particularly relevant because (a) it is to be taken for granted that 2nd-year models will have fewer problems than 1st-year models, and (b) Kawasaki is not BMW. (I am curious to know which specific 1st-year problems that the K1200S had, were subsequently fixed such that people who waited until the 2nd year did not have those problems. The major problem that I know of, is the engine vibration, which is not likely to have been solved, and if it was solved, it evidently wasn't until after the K12GT was introduced, because the reviews invariably mentioned the excessive engine vibration. But even if by chance this has since been solved and thus has the characteristic of a "teething problem", it still isn't particularly relevant to the C-14.)
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