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Restoration of a Kawasaki Z750 Turbo

WHO CAN CATCH A KAWASAKI? screamed the cover of Kawasaki’s 1984 range brochure and racing across that cover was a Kawasaki Z750 Turbo looking pretty much just like the magnificent example above. Resplendent in its two-tone Ebony/Firecracker Red livery, with gloss black engine and black chrome exhausts, this 1984 ZX750-E1 model looks box-fresh and ready to go. Continue reading

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2015 Autumn Stafford Sale

This weekend brings the 22nd Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in Stafford and, with it, Bonhams’ 2015 Autumn Stafford Sale. Being unable to make it in person, I thought I’d console myself with a game of Fantasy Auction. What’s that? You’ve never played? Allow me to explain. In Fantasy Auction, you choose a real-life auction and then you set yourself a budget and then you pick the lots you really could be tempted by and what your maximum bid would be. After the auction, you can check the results to see whether you’d have been successful.

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Retro motorcycles

Over the past few years the market for retro motorcycles, those machines that conjure up memories of the past, has really expanded and now many of the mainstream manufacturers have at least one retro model in their range. With that in mind, I thought it might be entertaining to compare these machines with the ones they take their inspiration from. Continue reading

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Kawasaki Z1-R (1978)

During the ’70s and ’80s, many of my father’s friends were keen motorcyclists. Consequently, a number of interesting machines came to my teenage attention. One that left a particularly deep impression was the Kawasaki Z1-R. Immediately and obviously different to its predecessors and peers, I clearly recall being struck by its appearance which, for the time (1978), was distinctly exotic. Continue reading