Parallel Lives

So does the new Kawasaki Z650 offer the perfect combination of easy-to-ride intensity, as the company claims? We went along to the bike’s launch in Spain to find out more...

- Carl 'Pretty Boy' Stevens

Many of us crave the raw brutality, fight-inducing aggression and incredible feeling from top shelf components that a hulking super naked gives. Yet a huge number of riders, both new and old, are defecting to (or not graduating from) smaller capacity naked machinery – with Kawasaki swelling the middleweight ranks with capable, unintimidating, but certainly stylish options. And the new Z650 falls exactly into this description.

For us, this bike has a lot to live up to. Replacing the ER-6n was always going to be a tough job as it was such a cheap and easy all round package. Then the 'Z' heritage is filled with four decades of incredible and iconic machinery that still carries a lot of clout. So a combination of the two for this new bike could surely be an absolute winner, right?

We've always wanted that little bit of extra spice for the ER-6n – although we all are self-admitted spice-oholics. We’re all for practicalities, but we also want to have a blast when things denote fast. Finding a machine able to blend both into its remit is much harder to find than it sounds. Could this Kawasaki finally crack that nut? It seems like Team Green means business here.