RETRO SPECTIVE Kawasaki Z1000

Stealing the name of a legendary Jap four sounds like sacrilege, but it wasn't. Welcome to the 2003-2009 Z1000...

- BERTIE SIMMONDS

Rehashing legendary names doesn’t always work unless the model continues with an unbroken bloodline.

The original Z1000 was a logical progression from ‘The Daddy’ that was the Z1, but by the early 1980s the Z1000 bloodline ran dry. Kawasaki were the first to recognise that the style and substance of the Zeds were worth revisiting: first with the likes of the Zephyr range in the early 1990s and latterly with the ZRX1100 and 1200 from the late 1990s on – they aped the original Eddie Lawson Replicas in ‘R’ format.