Adventure Rider
Affordable all-rounder for newbies and commuters
These days, everyone’s building a lightweight or middleweight parallel twin motorcycle. Honda has the 500 series, Kawasaki has its 300/400 series, even KTM is developing a new 490cc parallel twin line.
Listening to motojournos talk, you’ll hear them say these new motorcycles are “unexciting.” Well, maybe if you’re used to being jetted about the world to fly Ohlins-equipped hyperbikes, yeah. But to Joe Newbie, a 400 parallel twin has plenty of jam. For a commuter, they’re more than enough for the job. For a budget-strapped adventurer, they’ve got enough power to get across a continent at highway speeds, if needed. That’s why, despite all the changing trends in the motorcycle industry, manufacturers have been building bikes like this since the late 1960s. The silly-fast Z1 might have been Kawasaki’s flagship in the early 1970s, but the KZ400 was the bike that many riders could actually afford. This 19