OLD ZXR400/ GREY IMPORTS

Bruce isn’t quite old enough to remember this, but he does go on about his previous lives when he’s had too much East Anglian sparkling wine, so he does have some faint inklings. The last four-cylinder 400 sportsbike made by Kawasaki was the ZXR400, and was in fact the last 400cc four to be officially sold in the UK at all, going off sale in 1999. It was a startling piece of kit back then, and would still raise a chuckle even now. It made ‘just’ 65bhp but weighed in at a svelte 165kg dry (just under 180kg wet), and had the best in chassis tech Japan could offer. That meant a twin-spar fabricated aluminium frame, with a beefy aluminium swingarm, USD front forks, twin four-piston brake calipers up front, and a full race replica fairing. It looked exactly like the incredible Kawasaki ZXR750 superbike of a few years earlier, down to the eye-bleeding graphics and the twin ‘Hoover hose’ air intakes. These were just for cooling the head rather than ram-air intakes, but still looked the absolute business.

The ZXR400 was part of the weird Japanese home market of the 1980s and 90s, where 400cc four-strokes and 250cc two-strokes were enormous. The rider licencing rules meant most folk weren’t allowed to ride anything bigger, so all of the efforts of the big firms went into these bikes. While European riders were buying 750s and 1000s, the home market wanted the same style, tech and handling with smaller engines. So we got the ZXR400, as well as the Honda VFR/RVF400 and CBR400, Suzuki GSX-R400 and Yamaha FZR400RR SP EXUP, plus the strokers: Honda NSR250, Yam TZR250, Suzuki RGV250 and Kawasaki KR-1S. They spilt over into overseas markets thanks to so-called ‘grey imports’ where enterprising businesses bought up containers of nearly-new 250s and 400s and sold them in the UK.

The ZXR400 and Honda’s VFR400 were the only 400s officially brought into the UK, and the Suzuki RGV250 and Kawasaki KR-1S were the only officially-imported strokers. The problem with the 400s was that they were just as expensive to make as a 600 or 750: changing the size of the cylinders and fabricating a slightly smaller frame didn’t save any cash in production of course. Japanese riders didn’t have the choice of the bigger bikes so were captive buyers: in the UK folk paid a bit more and got a 750 or 600 instead.