Letter From Japan

LETTER FROM Japan

ROUNDUP

Kawasaki: Will half as many cylinders bring twice the market-share?

Most people don’t know it, but over 80 percent of Kawasaki’s total motorcycle production—including the bikes built in the Lincoln, Nebraska, plant—is aimed at markets outside of Japan. Two things make that figure interesting: One is that except for Japan, nearly every motorcycle market around the world is declining; the other is that Kawasaki has only a two-percent share of the Japanese domestic market. In other words, Kawasaki doesn’t sell many bikes at home.

So Kawasaki is trying to figure out how to increase its domestic marketshare to at least four percent, or double the number of units it now sells in Japan. The question is how to do it.

What most Japanese bike-industry experts have concluded is that Kawasaki is upping the gambler’s ante by lowering the common denominator. That is, instead of just going head-to-head with the other manufacturers in the prestigious 250cc and 400cc inline-Four sportbike categories, Kawasaki will in-

stead hang its domestic-market hat on high-performance Twins.

This has already begun to happen here. The GPz250R has been available in Japan (and in the U.S., where it’s known as the 250 Ninja) for some time now, but it has been redesigned for 1987. It still puts out a claimed 43 bhp at 13,000 rpm. I suspect that the GPz250R actually makes more power than that; but the Transportation Ministry has a horsepower limit for each displacement category, even though the manufacturers seldom comply with that regulation except on paper.

The important thing is that once again, you in the States are seeing the effects of Kawasaki’s fewer-moving-parts-is-better tactic. The EX500 just introduced there uses an engine that is little more than one-half of a Ninja 1000 engine; but it still has enough power to propel the lightweight sporting machine at a suf-

ficient pace to keep it in the same league as some of the current, more sophisticated inline-Four machinery. In Japan we have virtually the same bike, but here it is called a GPz400S. It is only slightly down on brute power, producing a claimed 50 bhp at 10,500 rpm, or about 10 horsepower less than the American version. The bike is priced aggressively, as well.

Of course, Kawasaki still offers a full range of models and engine configurations in Japan, but it looks like the company is leading the way to simpler engines in lighter-weight chassis at more-reasonable prices.

It’s not much of a problem to design the most complicated and powerful 400cc motorcycle in the country; the real challenge is to design a highperformance 400 and make it affordable. That’s exactly what Kawasaki is trying to do.

There is one other thing in Kawasaki’s favor, something that will help the company around the world. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Motorcycle Group has a new Senior General Manager named Tetsuro Takahashi, and he loves motorcycles, motorcyclists and motorcycle racing. What more could anyone ask?

Kengo Yagawa