Power turned on suddenly at about 6000 rpm. At 7500 rpm it made 60 hp (you can compare the models in the chart below), but not the kind of power band we’re used to today. The bike was an air-cooled, two-troke triple of 498cc. Kawasaki had already made it available to the motorcycle press, whose reviews invariably praised the lightning-quick acceleration. In September 1968, the production bike was ready to be revealed to the world. We were told that they’d set out to build the fastest-accelerating bike in the world, and in just about everyone’s opinion they had. Kawasaki had to be pretty happy with their pilot model. However, speed had better be what you were after, because the bike didn’t offer much over its competition. Selling for $995, it was aimed directly at the T500. In June 1967, Kawasaki announced the quickest production bike in existence, at least in terms of acceleration: The 500cc Kawasaki Mach I. Sometimes you have to wonder how different things might have been had Kawasaki beaten them to the punch.
However, Kawasaki was developing the twin and the triple side-by-side and the Suzuki T500 was a big reason they went with the triple: After all, why compete when you can build something new and totally your own? It must be noted that Honda’s CB750 was released very shortly after Kawasaki’s first try at a four-stroke DOHC 750 at the time, Japan was a hotbed of motorcycle development and Suzuki and Honda released first. Judging by the A7, the 500cc rotary-valve twin could have been a world beater. (Ultimately, Kawasaki determined that the center cylinder never did present any sort of cooling issue.)Īnother problem, spark plug fouling, was solved by boosting the voltage of the Capacitor Discharge Ignition to zap the plugs with 25,000-30,000 volts. Instead of feeding behind the crank, its carburetors attached to the bottom of the cylinder. The A7 depended on a rotary disc, but the difficulty in feeding the center cylinder demanded that Kawasaki go with a standard piston-port, two-stroke design. Supposedly, the big problem with making a triple was dealing with middle-cylinder overheating. Using the very competitive 350cc A7 (above) as a starting point, Kawasaki began work on both a 500cc two-stroke twin and a three-cylinder design. Kawasaki had already started making a name for itself as a producer of small-capacity, two-stroke twins when they decided to up the ante by building a world-beater 500cc twin. Perhaps since it was a first effort, potential buyers simply decided to purchase the real thing (unlike today, there were quite a few new and competitive BSAs on the market). It essentially was a 650 copy of the BSA-A10, and it didn’t sell well. While they didn’t cost significantly more to build than smaller models, they did carry a much larger price tag. Sometime during the 1960s, Kawasaki realized they could make more money with large-capacity motorcycles. They eventually produced a family of four, ranging from 250cc to 750cc. Their constant goal was to build world’s fastest-accelerating production motorcycle when the competition started catching up, Kawasaki would then build a bigger one. Kawasaki did not come by its reputation by accident. The fact that they sounded like a herd of chainsaws while doing so did not diminish this well-deserved reputation–nor did it matter what you were riding or driving, since they came sized for any competition. ( first posted ) Around 1969, Kawasaki started developing a reputation for bikes that would pull up alongside you and then quickly leave you in a cloud of blue smoke.