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.