Birth Of Zed Power

Every month we take a look at the classic motorcycle market with a range of industry experts. This month, Paul Jayson from The Motorcycle Broker and our very own Scott Redmond look at high-performance yardsticks and Kawasakis in particular.

- Scott Redmond

The Z1 900 is a true design classic and a motorcycling icon – it has been since the day it hit the streets in the US in about July 1972.

They really hit the US showrooms from about September 1972 onwards and are all referred to as 1973 models, although they were produced in 1972. The Z1 removed Honda’s crown and left them chasing shadows with the CB750 until they bought out the CBX1000 in 1978. The CB750 pulled a claimed 125mph while the Z was electronically timed at 132mph, apparently. So the king was dead in 1972, long live the king and the Z was king when it came to top speed.

For ease of understanding these beautiful Zeds, we will refer to 1972 built motorcycles as 72s and all models built from January 1973 until around August 1973 as 73s, after which the Z1A came out.

Production in 1972 accounted for just under 5000 machines from Kawasaki: the first 1200 or so being very different from any of the remaining 3700 or so machines. I sold a first 1200 Z1 for £45k...