Forgotten 750s
KAWASAKI Z750 TWIN
IT IS CURIOUS HOW SOME THINGS LODGE IN THE memory. Back in the late 1970s, as I was failing to pay attention in sixth form, I lived next door to a chap who worked for East Midlands Allied Press in Peterborough, more commonly known as EMAP. I had a moped, and he would generously bring home surplus copies of their motorcycle magazines and hand them over. There would be the stodgy and staid Motorcycle Mechanics, offering such delights as showing you how to fit a new cam chain to your CD175. And there was the then-iconoclastic Bike, the attitude of which was much more to my taste.
In February 1979, they printed one of their supertests, marking the launch of the new Honda CB7502 and pitting it against Yamaha's XS750, Suzuki 's GS750 and Kawasaki's 2750 twin .
I cannot remember what Bike said about the Honda, Suzuki or Yamaha, but the 2750 test 's conclusions have stuck with me. Bike hated it. Compared to the triples and fours it was slow, they said. It was heavy, overcomplicated for a parallel twin and didn't handle . The big problem, according to Bike, was the then-new American emissions regulations. They had strangled the 2750. The rerouting of exhaust gasses and the two inadequate carburettors had ruined the DOHC twin . It was , they said : ''A motorcycle all bunged up with snot" .
It was this phrase that stuck with me . Ever since then I've been firmly convinced that the 2750 twin was an absolute dog. Why would Bike magazine lie to me? The 2750 did sit a little uncomfortably in Kawasaki's range . Their last 750 had been the utterly terrifying two-stroke triple, and the twin was surrounded by
