Scenes From Behind The Bamboo Screen: Acrobatic Kawasakis
The Secret of Their Handling "Quirks" Revealed
chris hudson (2008)


As anyone who has ridden an early Kawasaki street bike at speed can attest, their reputation for evil handling was well earned. Fearsomely fast in a straight line, those Mach I and Avenger 2-strokes become frightening to ride when the straights turned to curves. My most memorable experience with their bad manners was second hand, but it was scary enough to leave a lifelong impression. It took place during the mid-seventies during a pre-race practice session at Orange County raceway in southern California.

OCR, as it was known, was a drag-strip racetrack which used the parking lot and access roads to make up one of those hodgepodge circuits which were so characteristic of the era. I was riding a TD2, Yamaha's air-cooled 250 production racer. Peeling off into the track's one and only real sweeper, an 80 mph left-hander, I came up on my friend Mike Clarke on his Kawasaki 350 Avenger production bike. I was riding rather slowly, learning the track and warming the tires, yet I was astonished to see that even at this slow pace, my friend's machine was bucking so badly that he was on the verge of being spit off all the way through the turn. Ever since, whenever someone uses the phrase "...handles like it has a hinge in the middle," visions of that tank-slapping Kawasaki twin come clearly to mind.

It wasn't until the summer of 1997, when I made my first trip to Kawasaki's factory just south of Kobe, that the reasons for these handling quirks became clear. I was there to learn about the '98 ZX-9R and ZX-6R; old rotary-valve two-strokes were the last things on my mind. After receiving clearance at the security office in front of the main gate, Hirai from the ad agency guided me past the long rows of drab shops, some of which date from the pre-war period. In spite of their obvious age, though, all were filled with state-of-the-art machinery and humming with activity.


Allan Engel, patience of a nun

As we strolled along, sweating in the summer heat, I asked Hirai about the wide, ruler-straight road which divided the facility neatly in half and which was at least a half-mile long. It seemed far too big for any practical purpose. "Oh," he said. "During the war, this was the runway they used for the warplanes Kawasaki was building. After the war, when Kawasaki started building motorcycles, it was the company test track."

Instantaneously, the twenty-year-old mystery of those end-swapping Avengers, Samurais and Triples was solved. Kawasaki's first test track had no turns! They simply blasted the bikes up and down the old runway. Of course, tests on public roads were also made, but in those days there were very few roads in Japan which could put a high-performance machine's handling to the test. This would explain the extraordinary straight-line performance for which Kawasaki's bikes have always been famous, a reputation which continues to this day.

After the meetings Hirai took me to see the museum. It's on the second floor in one of the time-worn buildings along the runway. I generally try to avoid visiting motorcycle museums, too depressing. They remind me too much of zoos. Like imprisoned animals, the bikes sit there, robbed of the life that makes them what they are. Reduced to curiosities, they become mere caricatures. Far better that they be given to someone who will take care of them and ride them as they were meant to be ridden. Ride `em hard and put `em away wet. And if they get thrown down the road from time to time, so be it. They were all there, of course: the GP bikes ridden by Kork Ballington and Toni Mang, Lawson's Superbike, something exotic looking with Mick Grant's name on the fairing. Street bikes included a WI (Kawasaki's copy of BSA's 650cc A10), an early Z-1 and, over in the corner, a showroom fresh Avenger and Samurai, their wobbling forever stilled.



So much history, representing so many dreams and hopes, all reflecting quietly in the polished wood floor of a building that few ever visit, left behind by the remorseless rush of time.
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