WORDS: Boris Mihailovic PHOTOS: Nick Edwards, halflightphotographic. com. au

he original Kawasaki Z1 is one of the most beautiful bikes ever made. And it will always be thus. An aesthetically almostperfect creation, its proportions divine, its silhouette peerless, and its performance in 1972 the stuff of legend. It made me crazy when I first saw it. It predated my advent into motorcycling by quite a while( I was 11 when it first appeared), and while there was not much tolerance in my family home for crazy 11-year-olds, motorcycle magazines were not banned like Playboy magazines and I had a lock on my door. So my crazy grew. Fed by those motorcycle magazines and nurtured by my own cussed and wilful nature, I was touching myself over the Z900 before I was touching myself over the blonde in ABBA. Though when she came along, my fantasies placed her on the back of my Z900 for a perfect teenage ménage à trois.

The Z1 has a storied history which many of you will know. But for the new kids, it was the first of Kawasaki’ s Z models. It had been developed by Kawasaki working in conjunction with McFarlane Design under the project name‘ New York Steak’ in the late 60s, but it was held back from sale when Honda released its iconic 750- 4 in 1969. Kawasaki wanted to go to market with a bigger capacity bike. And it finally went to that market three years later with a recordsmashing bang.

In 1972, the Z1 smashed the FIM and AMA world record for 24-hour endurance. It beat the old record by 19.54mph( 31.44km / h), banging along for 2631 miles( 4234km) at an average speed of 109.64mph( 176.44km / h). At the same time, Pops Yoshimura tuned one up for Yvon Duhamel and he sat a lap record at Daytona – 160.288mph( 257.95kmh). At age 11, I knew nothing of this. I may well have exploded had I known. This was 1972. Only alien spaceships went that fast.