VOLUME ISSUE AUGUST , P133
Subscribe to more than 60 years of Cycle News Archives issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives
Instead, the KZ750
seemed to follow
a trend from
manufacturers
of watered-down
sportbikes.
that unleashed wild stallions like
the two-stroke 500cc Mach III
and a thoroughbred like the Z1
903cc, had turned out a gelding,
with this emasculated KZ lum
-
bering out of the gate. "Basically,"
CN wrote, "the KZ750 should be
a performer…the addition of twin
overhead camshafts combined
with huge bore and stroke should
produce a much wider usable
power curve. The KZ750 does
just that—but quietly and con
-
servatively—this being a trend
among motorcycle manufactur-
ers—to detune the superbikes."
"Everybody's doing it," CN had
written in another test of another
formerly sporty motorcycle, the
Suzuki GT250. "Suddenly, perfor-
mance doesn't really matter, and
most of the bikes coming out of
Japan are down on performance
and up in pleasantness." That
this particular motorcycle wasn't
a skyrocket in flight wasn't the
only reason that the two staffers
weren't delighted. Rather, they
were lamenting what appeared to
be the "demise of the superbike."
The reasons for the slowdown
were many, among them being
that Americans hadn't forgotten
the gas crisis of the early '70s
and performance was now taking
a back seat to fuel economy.
Additionally, product liability
lawsuits were beginning to rear
their ugly heads; just as the
Ford Motor Company turned its
mighty Mustang into a namby-
pamby, so too were motorcycle
companies beginning to provide
consumers with tamer rides. Ka
-
wasaki had recently released the
KZ400, another four-stroke twin
that shared more DNA with a
Honda CB350 than it did with its
own speedy Kawasaki brethren.
The 400 was not much of a per
-
former, and the KZ750 seemed to
be its nerdy big brother. The CN
crew's criticism of the bike went
even beyond its lack of firepower,
mocking the nanny-like nature
of the many instruction decals.
"Enough instruction decals," CN
wrote, "for a private aircraft."
In the end, the two writers
offered their eulogy for high-
performance motorcycles. "The
bikes that Gino and I remember
are probably gone for all time.
The KZ750 was built to cope with
a legal/regulatory environment
that is almost sickening in its
implications." They even accused
Kawasaki of mounting its foot
-
pegs "deliberately low enough to
drag, to discourage aggressive
riding."
Alas, poor Yorick, it was much
ado about nothing. Within a
few years, Katanas and GSX-Rs,
Ninjas and Hurricanes, would
appear on the scene. Today,
Ducati's Panigale V4 S is one
of several models surpassing
200 horsepower, even in stock
form. Rumors of the death of the
superbike were greatly exag
-
gerated, and today, nearly every
manufacturer offers a model that
would easily outperform these
'70s machines. With a twist of
the wrist, a 2026 rider can easily
grab some afternoon delight.
CN
We expected more from the KZ's motor.
