The Kawasaki GPz900R – Father Of The Modern Day Superbike?

All through the seventies, bike manufacturers, particularly the Japanese giants had been competing to produce the most powerful and fastest bikes of the time.

1983 had seen the launch of Honda’s VF750F with its revolutionary 90 degree V4 engine sitting in a package that gave unprecedented power and handling for a Japanese bike, and whose roots have extended right up to the present day.

In 1981, Kawasaki’s GPz1100 put the company right back at the front of the superbike class, and then in 1984 it delivered an almost knockout blow to the competition in the form of the GPz900R.

A high performance motorcycle that stays in production for 15 years is a rarity, however, the GPz900R did just that!

When American drag racer “Pee Wee” Gleason achieved sub 11 seconds for the standing quarter at Leguna Seca on the bikes launch, and over 150mph on the track, the GPz900R showed that it was king of it’s class. Not only fast, but this bike handled so well that it made the available power useable.

The power for the GPz900R came from a liquid cooled four cylinder sixteen valve engine, the first of this type of engine to be used in a bike, and the whole bike was enclosed in bodywork and looked as good as it went!

The frame was just a tubular steel spine, but without the usual down tubes which saved weight and allowed the use of a completely redesigned box section sub frame made from aluminium.

Having set a target of producing a machine that could perform and handle at the same time, rather than just be capable of straight line speeds, the GPz900R fulfilled this ambition.

Todays superbikes are in many ways derived from the design of the GPz900R, with monoshock suspension and enclosed bodywork, making the Kawasaki possibly the founder of modern bikes with it’s values of power combined with handling.

It is testament to the bike that it remained in production longer than two of its replacement models, the GPZ1000RX and the ZX-10, although towards the end of its life it had lost the hard core superbike image and was regarded as a capable sports-tourer.

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