I am somewhat glad that the whole turbo era has come and gone.
To quote a famous American "There ain't no substitute for cubes baby."
I had the luck to ride all of the factory turbo offerings in the 80s and to have a long term loan of a GPZ750.
in the main the Japanese applied turbo chargers to middleweight bikes and gave them such mild boost that they did not reach the performance of the bikes int he next capacity class. Yamaha and Suzuki should particularly hang their heads in shame for introducing all the complexity and cost of a turbo and really giving nothing back to the owner. Any decent normally aspirated 750 would absolutely snot the Yamaha and Suzuki turbo offerings - including I must add, their own offerings.
Honda at least had the decency to give the CX500T roughly the performance of a 750, albeit with complex electronics and massive lag.
Then came Kawasaki's offering. The 750 Turbo had pretty much the same performance as the 1100, had minimal lag and cleverly kept electronics to a minimum. The long term loaner i had the use of had been a Distributor's loan bike that was farmed out at press gatherings, sent to dealerships as a demonstrator and used as a test mule to sort some of the (relatively minor) problems the breed had when they first came to Australia.
In short it had been given an absolute and prolonged flogging. It was offered to me at a substantial discount but I declined in fear of what it might cost me down the track. another of my truly inspired decisions as the person who did buy it still has it, the blasted thing has been totally reliable and only in the past year or so has it cost him a top end refresh and a new bearing/seal in the turbo. The turbo seal/bearing was an eye-watering $550 installed, but then the OEM one copped a flogging and still lasted well over 100,000km and 30 years.
So, where does all this lead - the boxer is a difficult engine to turbo charge - just ask Porsche and Subaru - the inlets and exhausts are a long way from each other and require some very clever component locating and pipe bending to make it all happen. Unless you are only going to run very mild boost you need to introduce a host of electronic control systems - and for the power you get form modest boost a larger bore size will get you the same (or more)power increase.
