Development Concept

Big, bad and loaded with Kawasaki DNA

Says the product planner: “Even with our impressive 3-bike line up, I felt something was lacking, as though our performance image was diluted across three different models. Putting aside for now the growing touring market in Europe, I wanted to offer all those hard-core ZZR fans in the U.S. and Japan, the quintessential fans who understand the core Kawasaki, something to get excited about — something big, bad and loaded with Kawasaki attitude. It didn’t have to be the fastest, but it did have to be the most powerful, a flagship model, a new ZZR.”

This is how the ZZR project got its start. The most important concept was top performance in the open class. Apex hunting could be left to the Ninja ZX-10R. The new ZZR would not only be the most powerful — churning out more horsepower than the mighty 10R — it would also be very comfortable. In other words, Kawasaki’s engineers would sequence the latest evolution of the all-powerful ZZR DNA — the DNA of performance kings like the Z1.