Japanese Four Hundreds

In the United States 400cc's is not a lot. In Japan however 400cc bikes are the bread and butter of their industry. In Japan riders face restrictions (for licensing purposes I believe) for a long time there was a break at 400cc's. Because of these restrictions the Japanese domestic market is full of miniature versions of mainstream bikes, in this case sport bikes. And these 400's were a big deal in Japan. Japanese companies competed fiercely with their own respective repli-racers. Most of these models were sold predominately in Japan, some were exported so Europe and the rest of the world, and very few made it to the United States.

Honda's V4 program produced not only 750 version but a 400 version as well. Like the 750 Interceptor the 400 VF had high performance versions as well. Like 400's bigger the 750 V4 was gradually replaced by inline fours. The VFR400 made way to the CBR400RR. In addition to conventional four strokes Honda sold a 400cc version of their NS two stroke bike.

82-85 Honda VF400F NC12

'86-92 Honda VFR400 NC21 NC24

Honda VFR400R NC30

'94-96 Honda RVF400 NC35

'88-99 Honda CBR400RR NC23 NC25

85? Honda NS400R

Kawasaki offered a 400 version of the GPz in the 1980's. The GPZ evolved into the GPZ400R in 1985 and ZX4 in the 1988. The ZZR replaced the GPZ400R in 1990, and the ZXR400 replaced the ZX4 in 1989.

85-88 Kawasaki GPZ400R and ZX4

'89-99 Kawasaki ZXR400
'97-99? Kawasaki ZZR400
Suzuki produced 400cc versions of the GS and GSX Katana models in the 1970's and 1980's, but it wasn't until 1984 when the GSXR400 came to be. The GSXR400 actually preceded the infamous GSX-R750 by a couple of years. The design was based on Suzuki's racing GS1000R and 250 Gamma. Suzuki also sold the GSX400F Katana as a sport touring bike.

'84-99 Suzuki GSX-R400

'88-89 Suzuki GSX400F Katana
The Yamaha FZ400 was one of the few 400's to make it to the states, but it only lasted for three or so years. The FZ was followed by the much more aggressive FZR400.

'99-90 Yamaha FZ400?

'86-94 Yamaha FZR600R
No it's not Japanese, but I had to include it. It's the Ducati 400SS Junior, and it wasn't even really competitive with these Asian sports bikes. It was basically a 750SS with a smaller engine. A 750SS had 60hp, or about the same as any of these Japanese bikes. The 400SS only had 42hp.

Models like Kawasaki's ZZR400 and Suzuki's GSX400F are more sport tourers or soft sports bikes. Some day I hope to cover these types of quasi-crotch-rockets.

400cc versions of the big bore beasts I covered earlier are popular in Japan. Models like Honda CB400, Yamaha XJR400, Kawasaki ZRX400, Suzuki GSX400, and GSF400. For a while Suzuki produced a 400cc version of the popular SV650 in Japan.

I thought about including smaller bikes (125cc and 250cc) in this article, but I think I'll save that for another day.