Kawasaki

The importance of the secondary motorcycle market was acknowledged this week when Kawasaki announced it has begun manufacturing reproduction cylinder heads for its milestone Z1 900cc motorcycle from the 1970s.

Aeons ago, when the world made sense and Cosby was still on the box, Kawasaki made a 250cc sportsbike that revved sky-high and captured hearts. Now, it's resurrecting the mini-banshee with a shrieking, 17,000-plus RPM inline four called the ZX-25R.

Japan wants to move towards a clean, hydrogen-based energy economy, but to make that happen, it'll need to import liquid hydrogen from elsewhere. Meet the Suiso Frontier, the world's first liquid hydrogen transporter. It runs on diesel.

Kawasaki has taken a 49.9 percent stake in fancy-pants Italian brand Bimota, and is resurrecting it with a monster motorcycle. The Tesi H2 adds Bimota's famous center-hub steering and chassis to the wild Kawasaki H2 supercharged motor.

Kawasaki has finally dropped the supercharged super-naked it's been threatening to unleash for several months now. The Z H2 melds the looks of recent Kwaka nakedbikes with the 197-horsepower lunacy of the blown H2 motor, and it's not for the timid.

The motorcycle marketplace is recalibrated each year with the January Las Vegas sales, and this year saw new records and the changing tastes of the buying public. While vintage bikes performed well, the real movers were two-strokes, seventies classics and Japanese motorcycles.

Bonhams' Stafford Motorcycle auctions are held each spring and autumn at the Staffordshire County Showgrounds in the United Kingdom, and these auctions invariably throw up some fascinating motorcycles.

Yesterday, 21-year-old Ana Carrasco became the first female motorcycle world champion, surviving the final round of the 2018 World 300 Supersport Championship at Magny Cours in France with just three points from her 13th place, but enough to give her the title by a one-point margin.

Sydney's Ben Felten will go for a motorcycle land speed record this weekend in South Australia, aboard a Kawasaki ZX-10R. Since he's completely blind, he'll be taking instructions from an ex-MotoGP rider over a radio. The target? Over 156 miles per hour, or 251 kmh.

The motorcycle auction marketplace evolved rapidly at the year-defining Las Vegas auctions this year, both on a macro and micro level. Mecum's five day sale was the largest motorcycle auction ever held, while Bonhams set a new world record by fetching $979,000 for a 1951 Vincent Black Lightning.

The latest member to join Kawasaki's Z gang comes in stark contrast with the family's futuristic and aggressive streetfighter looks. Acting as a tribute to the 1972 Z1 patriarch, it is a meticulously styled modern classic variant of the current Z900 with some targeted mechanical modifications.

This year the Autumn Stafford Sale seemed more eccentric than normal, with some extraordinary motorcycles selling for not very much, and at the other end of the scale, several of the most expensive two-stroke motorcycles ever sold at auction.