Shades of Lawson: 1983 Kawasaki KZ1000R ELR

The early ’80s were a great time to be an enormous Japanese superbike, as Wes Cooley, Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson were busy catapulting your fortunes into the stratosphere. The Kawasaki KZ series in particular was enjoying the fruits of Lawson’s labor, as the flat tracker from Upland, California won the AMA Superbike…

Icon: 1978 Kawasaki Z1R

In the American idiom, there is no substitution for cubic inches. Kawasaki understood the unmistakable allure of power and created what many regard as the iconic hot rod of the 1970s. And as hard as it may be to see, today’s mega-hyper-super bikes can trace their lineage back to the Z1R. The recipe remains the…

Little Kwaker: 1989 Kawasaki ZXR250A for Sale

A small-displacement motorcycle with a four-cylinder powerplant like this Kawasaki ZXR250 really makes no practical sense: singles and parallel-twins are simple to manufacture, inexpensive to maintain, easier to package, torquey, and fun to ride. Up to a certain size, where the weight of a single piston and connecting rod create unacceptable vibrations that irritate the…