BIG BORE GALORE
Kawasaki’s excellent oversized middleweight that rewrote the naked rulebook
WORDS: JONURRY
The smaller Zed made a big impact on the class when it was released in 2004...
PICTURES: FB ARCHIVE
Kawasaki has never been a company that likes to play by the rules, especially when its back is up against the wall, which was most certainly the case in the early 2000s. After some terrible sales, due to a lacklustre model range, Kawasaki’s top brass started to turn the whole show around and 2003 marked the start of the firm’s revival. With the radical Z1000 and Ninja ZX-6R grabbing the headlines, Kawasaki needed to keep its momentum going and so for the next year it looked towards the high volume naked middleweight class.
While the launch of the new Ninja ZX-10R certainly stole the front covers in 2004, it was the bike that was unveiled alongside it that ultimately proved the more vital to Kawasaki’s future success – the Z750.
Far from simply a smaller version of the Z1000, the Z750 was a fresh new model in its own right – and one that defied the conventional wisdom of the time. Where tradition dictated that a middleweight Japanese inline four had to have a 599cc capacity due to the fact many were powered by re-tuned supersport engines, Kawasaki decided on another route with its new naked Zed.
Taking the Z1000’s 953cc motor (which itself was actually a re-worked ZX-9R unit), Kawasaki reduced its bore by 8.8mm to give it a 748cc capacity. In doing so Kawasaki gave the Z750 a massive advantage over the rest of the middleweight class – midrange.