003 Kawasaki Z1 000
Hey someone
I
filled my front
tire with helium'
Niee
By BLAKE CONNER
PHOTOS By BRIAN J. NELSON
f someone with the pulse of the
street scene were to describe what
the ideal street fighter is, he would
probably say that it has to look bad
ass, pull monster wheelies and basically act like an unruly hooligan. Ever
since the look became popular, the
manufacturers have slowly warmed
up to the idea, but very few have
been able to get it right. Has Kawasaki finally found the hot recipe with the
new Z 1OOO? Is the Z1 000 worthy of
the title "hooligan," "bad boy" or
"urban bully"? We spent some quality
time on the bike to see.
The streetfighters with the real
credibility have always been openclass sportbikes stripped to their
bare essentials, hardly any
plastic, just headlights
and attitude. That was
kind of a sexy sentence, don't you think?
The problem has
I
always been that whenever the manufacturers have tried to recreate the
formula, they have always left out a
few key elements, mainly the horsepower and the lack of weight. They
keep trying to shove detuned big
bores with budget chassis down our
throats. The thing is that they never
asked the consumers what they want.
So the consumers keep stripping
their RIs, GSX-Rs and ZX-9Rs to the
bone to make their own - or maybe
it's just the cool thing to do after you
crash and can't afford to replace
38 MAV7,2003'
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