Muscle Bikes Part 2: Beasts from the East

While the CB was hot bike for the day, I don’t feel that it was a muscle bike. The CB did feature a powerful engine, but it also featured a long list of other refinements that transformed it into something new. The CB introduced a new generation of motorcycle, the generation of the universal Japanese motorcycle (or UJM). This era had its own standout muscle bike, called the Z1. In 1972 Kawasaki wanted to upstage Honda and their CB750. To do so they created the Z1. Parked next to one another the CB750 and the Z1 looked very similar, they both had air cooled inline fours, they both had electric starts and disc brakes. The Kawasaki however had a 900cc double over head cam engine that made over 70 horse power. Honda’s single overhead cam 750cc engine made about 60. The Z1 is to motorcycles what the Hemi Cuda is to muscle cars (the Z1 was arguably the only vehicle on the road that could out run a Cuda). It had a beast of an engine and was painfully fast. As a typical muscle bike the Kawasaki’s chassis was not up to the task of managing all that power. The brakes were insufficient and the handling was downright dangerous. Still the Z1 was the bike to beat in the 1970’s. The age of the UJM continued to build up and each of the big four introduced bigger and better bikes. Kawasaki had their Z1 (KZ900) and KZ1000, Suzuki had their GS1000 and GS1100, Honda had their CB900/10000/1100, and Yamaha had their XS-11. Much like the rise and fall of the muscle cars in the late 60’s and early 70’s muscle bikes peaked in the late 70’s and early 80’s. In the early 80’s the motorcycle industry in the US nearly crashed and hit rock bottom in 1984. This nearly put an end to the excess of the UJM, but it ushered in a new area the era of the metric crusier.