Kawasaki KZ750 twin
With a runaway success like the four-cylinder Z1/Z900, plus the soon-to be released fours in the shape of the Z650 and Z1000, why would Kawasaki bother with a 750cc twin?
The question was especially poignant with the recent demise of the troubled TX750 Yamaha twin, although Yamaha did soldier on with its now-venerable XS650 twin. The British parallel twin pretenders had largely vanished; the Enfield Interceptor, BSA’s A65, both gone, and the Norton Commando about to do the same, leaving only the 750cc Triumph Bonneville, of which the less said, the better. Perhaps Kawasaki felt that the once-proud class was ripe for picking, and that big-twin fans needed looking after. It’s true that the new breed of four-cylinder bikes – soon referred to as UJM (Universal Japanese Motorcycles) – did not have across-the-board appeal; many felt that the complexity and the loss of do-it-yourself maintenance was a backward step.
Of course, Kawasaki had built a big twin before, or rather, they had inherited the BSA-like W1 650 as a result of their takeover of Meguro in 1964. Very British in concept and styling, the 650, through subsequent W2 and W3 versions, remained in production until 1975, by which time 26,289 had been built. So there was a gap in the range that the Big K wished to fill, but what resulted owed nothing to the W range. In fact, the genesis for the new 750 came in the form of the Z400, a popular seller from the point of its release in 1974, and which was marketed as the “little brother” of the four-cylinder Z1, at half the price. The new KZ750 actually made its world debut at the 1975 Motorcycle Show at Earls Court, London. Released for sale in 1976, the KZ750 (also known as the Z750 in some markets but never released in Australia) was