Kawasaki has always done the retro thing well – and often ‘first’, too. Even in my 20s I loved the look of the Kawasaki Zephyr range, copying as they did the original big Zeds of old – the bikes that my uncles would turn up on and the bikes I was plonked on top of as a kid and the first bikes I would pillion on.
Zeds were in my blood, so the 1990s Zephyrs were attractive to me, even if I was (back then) a dedicated sports-bike nut…
Of course, for some the Kawasaki W650/800 is more their thing, and – moving later on – the ZRX1100/1200R, of which I’ve owned a few and which (like the Zephs) are now classics in their own right. I was lucky enough to use a Z900RS for a few months and enjoyed it. Even though I knew it wasn’t an original, it still prompted an outpouring of emotion for bikers of a certain age when it was parked up. You’d see the double take, then the realisation (as they got closer) that it wasn’t an original Z1 at all…
And so I was expecting the same with the Z650RS – but perhaps less so. Less so because, well, I’m sure I’m not the only person disappointed to realise that this bike had only TWO cylinders. And
