Wayne Gardner arrived in Europe in 1981, he was pretty much an unknown rider from down under. Throughout that season he wrestled his Moriwaki Kawasaki to some impressive results around the UK, he would go on to bag a 500cc…
The classic bikes of tomorrow ridden by Classic Motorbikes Net today. Every decade presents us with an instant classic, there’s no shortage of examples that I could use, here’s a few that pop in to my head. The Honda CBX1000,…
Here at Classic Motorbikes we don’t just copy and paste articles from other websites, we are much more proactive than that. We are bike mad which means we often buy bikes with our heart and not with our head and…
Prior to Dave Simmonds’ World Championship in the 125cc class in 1969, Kawasaki had made little impact on the international Grand Prix scene.
The Kawasaki twin had one of the longest gestation periods of any post war race machine.
There are lots of occasions throughout history when the wrong guy is credited with a break through or important event. Certainly while researching this article my recollections of events where challenged constantly. There are lots of references to the GPX 600, both in books and on the web but precious little about the bike that started it all, the GPZ 600.
During the mid 60s Kawasaki led the world in two-stroke race technology, the pinnacle of this arguable being the 125cc KR-3 V four two stroke.
Kawasaki offered two smaller triples that followed the same general format established by the Mach III.
History tells us that the first machine that we now know as a Superbike was the CB750 and if you look no further in the annals of time than that then all is well. Honda only got there by the skin of their teeth however, as lurking in the wings during the same period was Kawasaki’s much higher specification, 750cc four cylinder machine that unfortunately was being so rigorously developed and tested it missed the limelight by the merest of whiskers.
If the arrival of the H1 triple had established Kawasaki as a manufacturer of performance motorcycles the H2 750cc triple confirmed it.
