It looks like Kawasaki has hit a home run with its new Z900RS retro standard, and no-one in the press corps has even ridden it yet.
It?s a homage to the mighty inline fours of yore like the Z1 (below) and based on the well-regarded Z900?itself a cracking performer that Cycle World?s road testers placed ahead of the Triumph Street Triple and Yamaha FZ-09 in a group test a few weeks ago.

We haven?t seen such feverish interest in a bike since Husqvarna revealed the Svartpilen and Vitpilen exactly two years ago. But the Austrians have inexplicably been dragging their feet on releasing those bikes.
And even if when they?re revealed at the Italian EICMA show in a few days, there?s a real danger that Kawasaki will steal Husky’s thunder with the production-ready Z900RS.
Kawasaki has wisely taken a leaf out of the BMW and Yamaha playbooks, and has given pre-production samples of the Z900RS to leading custom builders to work their magic. It’s called the Beyond Z project.
So let?s take a closer look at the mods that Moto Corse, Doremi and Bito have made. A few aspects of the Z900RS are already rankling with potential buyers, and it looks like the builders have similar concerns.

BITO R&D Z900RS The specialist Kawasaki tuning shop Bito R&D is located deep in the sparsely populated mountain woodlands of the Hy?go Prefecture, an eight-hour drive west of Tokyo. In the 70s, owner Jo Bito worked with Pops Yoshimura on Z1 race bikes, but today he takes orders f...