Used test: 1976 Kawasaki KH400 NICE BIKES COME LAST
Riding around on a KH400 on a sunny afternoon was a very pleasant experience. The Kawasaki triple started easily and ran reliably. It was reasonably quick, very smooth, and handled well. It seemed like a capable, practical and very nice bike.
And that, in a way, was precisely its problem.
Kawasaki’s two-stroke triples of the 1970s weren’t known for being pleasant or reasonable, let alone nice. They were fast, loud, ill-handling sons of bitches that were too much for many riders – and that was a big part of their appeal. But the KH, which was launched in 1976, was too soft and civilised to live up to that reputation.
To be fair, this wasn’t really Kawasaki’s fault. The triples’ mad, bad image had been built on the 500cc H1 that had been unleashed in 1969, and the even more outrageous 750cc H2 that had followed it in 1972. Those models had been hugely popular in the USA, in particular, where their blend of power and light weight had given them unbeatable acceleration.
In those early days the Kawas’
