Well, Kawasaki has finally done it. I’ m sure it’ s been a long time in the planning and execution, but it’ s about time, and there are going to be a lot of happy campers in the Kawasaki fan camp. At the Tokyo motorcycle show, Kawasaki unveiled the Z900RS, which is now a real thing. Yep, Kawasaki has finally given Team Green fans what they’ ve been requesting for years – a modern retro-sport( uh huh, that’ s a class now) that is worthy of the name and has been directly inspired by the original Z1. There have been plenty of bikes from Kawasaki which have had the‘ Z’ prefix over the years, but none have had the retro looks and performance you might expect of a bike designed to pay a modern homage to the bike initially developed under the code name of Project New York Steak. Sure, the Zephyr range from the 1990s kinda had the looks but certainly didn’ t have the performance. Fast forward four months from the Tokyo Show and Kawasaki NZ has taken delivery of the new Z900 – dubbed the Z900RS( retro-sport) to differentiate it from the Z900 non-retro-but-certainly-quite-sport – some 46 years after the original 1972 machine. We received a call at KR from Kawasaki HQ – which has de-camped from its long-running Auckland address to a new site in Hamilton and is quite a feat considering it only took four days in execution – inviting us to Pukekohe Park Raceway to lay our greasy mitts on the new bike, which was to be introduced by non-other than Graeme Crosby, the Kiwi most closely associated with the Z1 – historically and today with his beautiful rebuilds and upgraded originals. It turns out the Larrikin Biker assembled the very first Z1 in New Zealand in 1972. As a bonus, we were also to get to opportunity to ride Kawasaki’ s newest sporting entry into the LAMS market, the allnew completely and redesigned Ninja 400. Yamaha’ s YZF-R3 has had the sports LAMS market pretty much sewn up for the last couple of years and Kawasaki’ s baby Ninja has been on the back foot.
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Kawasaki is set to shake up the NZ market with the retro-sport Z900RS and all-new Ninja 400.