1984 Kawasaki ZX750-E Turbo.
“If intent is enough to convict, anyone purchasing Kawasaki?s 750 Turbo should have his driver?s license revoked,? wrote one moto-journalist in 1984.
This Kawasaki was the last of the corporate turbos, which began with Honda?s CX500T in 1982, moved along in 1983 to Suzuki?s XN65 and Yamaha?s Seca Turbo, and ended here. Though Kawi bean counters probably wondered why anyone bothered doing the project, as the other OEMs had dropped their turbos for the 1984 model year. But the money had been spent, so might as well put it out on the market.
The major question was: Why build a turbocharged motorcycle" It was a complicated and expensive endeavor, and more horsepower could always be added by using a bigger engine…but turbo-mania was in the air. That could be blamed on Kawasaki, which had sold a KZ1000 with an aftermarket turbo kit back in 1978 and ?79 (Retrospective, April 2014) with moderate success. Then the factory boys began fiddling with a KZ650 in 1980, a good bike that had been around since 1976 and was admittedly getting a bit long in the tooth. R&D decided to update the 650, an in-line four with DOHC and two valves per cylinder, by boring out the 652cc engine another 4mm, now 738cc with a 66mm bore and 54mm stroke. And this GPz750 was the model the turbo engineers decided to build on. The ZX750 Turbo was actually introduced in April of 1983, at an Austrian racetrack. Kawasaki sensibly felt that this bike, with its potent...