it wasn’t until I took it for an
open road burn of a good couple of
hundred kays, in the company of
bigger bikes, that I discovered just
how wrong first impressions can be
to my eye, the Vulcan had all the cool of a mis-
cue at the final of a biker’s pool tournament.
Kawasaki call it a ‘café’, and as far as I can see
the café element consists of a flyscreen and
some white and coloured bits. As a cruiser you
can see its donor heritage in the Ninja 650, and
that’s no bad thing, when you get used to it,
but as one rider described it, “It’s fun to ride,
but you don’t look at it while you gas up”.
So far all I’ve done is denigrate the bike, and as I say
it took a while, but this bike grew on me, in surprising
ways. For a cruiser styling this thing loves a corner,
sure you can scrape the boots pretty easily, but you
KIWI RIDER 51