Kwak addict Martin Lambert spends our cash on a ZZR1400

2014 Kawasaki ZZR1400 Performance Sport

Ever since seeing a Z1 B parked up at the end of his street on the way to school, Kawasaki Europe’s PR Manager, Martin Lambert, has been obsessed by the brand. So much so, that as well as working for the company for 25 years he has owned more than 45 Kawasakis to date and currently has six in his garage, two in the shed, two in his house, one in his loft and a variety of H1 and S2 parts in the spare room. What would he buy given a budget of £8700? The last of the monstermotored models...

“There are so many I could happily spend the money on,” he says. “The ZX-7R is still great value, I have a passion for the GT550 after my days as a dispatch rider, W650s are brilliant retros and the late-model ZX-9R makes for a wonderful sports tourer, but what I’d buy is the ZZR1400 because it is a very special bike and the last of its breed. “Kawasaki is such a strong engineering company and also a very traditional one and this ethos is shown in the evolution of the ZZR. The original ZZR1100 was so iconic in the day, the world’s fastest bike and a demonstration of Kawasaki’s ability to make a monster motor, and the ZZR1400 still retains this feeling and is the last of a generation of old-school bigcapacity hyperbikes. “When you accelerate hard on a ZZR it is a feeling like nothing else. Open it up on a test track and the way a ZZR’s rev counter and speedo match one another in top all the way to 186mph is just astounding.

“The later models, which have traction control and ABS, offer the perfect blend of brutal analogue performance thanks to the 1441cc motor with enough modern electronics. And given the option, ideally I’d have a Performance Sport model, which gains an Akrapovic silencer and Öhlins shock.”