Little Gem

If you are of a certain age and still riding, chances are you first saddled up out of necessity.

From the mid-1960s through to the end of the 80s, socio-economic circumstances meant cars were financially beyond the reach of most of the working youth so it was either shanks’s pony, a push bike or a commuter motorcycle. It’s my contention that if the kids of the period had been able to access machines such as this month’s subject matter, Kawasaki would have had a much larger fan base and significantly earlier than it did.

In camera we have an exquisite example of what the Japanese factories were offering en masse to the average commuter of SE Asia and sporadically to the USA. It’s simply light years ahead of anything being offered in Europe at the time with the possible exception of more expensive machines from Italy and Germany. Possibly a supreme irony of post-Second World