Origins of the Concours Was doing some web work tonight, scanning and writing - anybody up for a trip down memory lane? [ photos removed from web - sorry. wengland ] The red is a 1983 GPz-750 in South Mountain Park, outside Phoenix Arizona. Ridden by my former boss, Tom Callahan, back when we worked together at Arizona Kawasaki in Tempe. The silver is my modified 1984 GPz-550 in my dad's backyard, circa 1990. The frame is painted, wheels are painted, Fox shock, Kerker header, transmission gears undercut.... A lot of little things that helped make that bike an absolute joy to ride. To this day, it remains my favorite bike ever. Smooth, fast, light, raucous.... riding it made me smile real big...! The memory lane stuff is due to the fact that in the early 1980's I graduated from Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Phoenix, and then spent about 5 years in dealerships in parts and service. The bulk of those years were spent in Arizona, at Arizona Kawasaki in Tempe and then the sister store Kelly's Kawasaki in Mesa, Arizona. In 1981, Kawasaki came out with the first GPz's, the 550's and 1100's. Followed by the 750 in 1982. By 1984, all the GPz line had gained frame mounted fairings and rubber engine mounts. The rounded fins had been restyled with sharp square edges to suggest new technology inside, or to tart up the same old, same old - depending on your point of view. Why? Because in 1982 Honda brought out their V4 V45 Sabre. Suddenly, all the people coming into our shop wanted to know if water cooled was better than air, whether our air-cooled inline fours were as smooth as the new Honda V4's... the styling licks and sharper and sharper focus of the GPz series reflected Kawasaki trying to keep customers in the face of Honda's new technology. In 1983, Honda brought out the first Interceptor, the 750 Interceptor. Everyone raved about it, it really was a revelation. Fast, pleasant, excellent handling, state of the art 16 valve liquid cooled V4 motor.... In the Kawasaki dealer where I worked, we felt we were sunk. The 1983 GPz-750 was a very poor seller. In magazines there were rumors of all the Japanese companies coming out with V4 motors. Our factory rep told us to just sit tight, that good things were coming, that Kawasaki was about to bring out a new line of liquid cooled engines that would be state of the art. A poster showing the entire 1984 Kawasaki lineup had a silhouette / profile, rather than a photo, of the bike that would be the 900 Ninja. Bear in mind that in 1984, all the Japanese brought out new big-bore sportbikes. Kawasaki had the 750 Turbo and the GPz-1100, Yamaha the FJ-1100, Honda the VF-1000 Interceptor, and Suzuki had hopped-up the GS-1100 and given it a new frame and sporty bodywork. Against that competition, the GPz's were a refined and mature design. They were at the end their time, as good as air-cooled fours would ever get, we just hated to admit it. Dinosaurs on their last legs... fast dinosaurs, but still dinosaurs. And then we found out that into this fray, the new Kawasaki was going to be a liquid cooled 900cc inline four. Oh crap.... An inline four? Shoot - old tech!!!! And how in the world did Kawasaki expect us to sell a 900cc engine against everybody else's 1000-1100cc motors? Then we got our first 900 Ninjas, put them together and rode them. Fast, smooth, excellent handling. Magazines tested them, and came back raving about the handling, about the power, about how the 900 Ninja felt like a GPz-550 on steroids with it's 10,500 rpm redline and peaky engine and six-speed transmission. We sold all we could get. The 900 Ninja was all we could have hoped for, and more. But it was a huge departure from the air cooled 8-valve inline fours Kawasaki had been selling for the past 10 years. For instance.... Where the GPz's hung their air cooled motors out for people to view, the 900 Ninja hid most of the motor hidden behind plastic. There were just a few abbreviated fins on the head, as styling touches, so that the engine looked somewhat "normal". The sixteen valve motor was cool with it's narrowed cylinder block and straight intake ports, but the layout was strange - the cam chain up the LH side rather than the traditional center. DOHC, but with rocker arms so that the home mechanic could adjust their own valves if so inclined. A car-type alternator mounted behind the cylinder block on the LH side of the motor. And an electric fan... a fan??? Sigh. It was exciting, it was new-age, but it also seemed so very automotive to those of us selling and servicing bikes at that time. What's funny in retrospect is just how successful those 900 Ninjas were, against everybody. At a time when the entire Japanese motorcycle industry was abuzz with rumors that the inline fours were finished, the 900 Ninja squelched all talk of the inline four design being dated or finished. People roadraced the 900 Ninjas, they toured quickly on them, they commuted, they cruised Main St. The 900 Ninja was also smooth, even though the engine was solidly mounted in the frame, thanks to the gear driven counterbalance shaft. Not quite as smooth as a V4 Honda, but far smoother than the KZ-1000's that the new bike replaced. Rider magazine did a great article around 1985, where they hung soft saddlebags and a tankbag on a 900 Ninja and talked about what a great sport-tourer that bike and motor made, with it's moderate seating position and strong smooth engine and great handling. And then in 1986 came the Concours. A bike that appears to have been designed to be a BMW clone, much as the Japanese V-twins are meant to be Harley clones. Compared to the BMW's of 1986, the Concours was fantastic - smoother than the K100rs, far cheaper, equal or superior in just about every measure of performance. And stuffed in the engine bay was an engine that just two years prior had been considered state of the art in the sportbike world. And sold with a promise by Kawasaki to make no major changes for 5 years, to allow the aftermarket time to develop accessories for the Concours as they had done for the BMW sport-touring bikes. A 5 year life cycle at that time was a very strange concept for the Japanese - typically a Japanese model life would be 3-5 years, max. Sadly, the Concours hasn't exactly taken the world by storm. At one point production was halted in the early 1990's, I can only assume due to poor sales. Now in the 21st century, the Concours has become a budget sport-tourer with a long history and a buzzy motor. While the 900 Ninja was considered pretty smooth in it's day, other machines have improved and so now the 900 Ninja and 1000 Concours both seem just a tad rough at high-rpm. I suspect that the 'Net has been somewhat responsible for reviving the Concours by allowing folks to ask about the strange Japanese Euro bike online, like on this list. The ironic part of the above is that now, almost 20 years later, Honda makes only two models with V4 motors, as does Yamaha. The inline four, thought to be dead in the early 1980's by many due to the inherent advantages of the V4, is alive and well after all this time - and you'd have a hard time buying a V4 motorcycle at all if you don't like the Royal Star, VFR-800, or ST-1300. The other thing about measuring the success of the 900 Ninja motor is to look at all the motors in the Kawasaki line-up based on that engine. The Concours, the current Lawson Replica, the ZZR-1200, the ZX-10 and ZX-11, the Eliminator. Twenty years after it was first designed, that engine is still being updated and used in brand new Big K products. Amazing....! The little engine that could.... Hoping that I haven't rambled too much here, or gotten too far off-topic. Best, Doug Grosjean Pemberville, Ohio