Kawasaki W650 - Wrenchmonkees #32

I have a confession to make. I've been having a relationship with another girl for years behind my wifes back. I keep her tucked away in a garage up the road and I'm always making excuses to go see her. I could ride her all day long and most of the time I do. Then at other times, it's just a quickie up to the shops - but always satisfying. You could call her my mistress. My metal mistress. So when Wrenchmonkees sent me an email saying they were building a bike for the Mistress Gentlemen's Motorcycle Club (MGMC), I instantly related to the clubs name. Not because it sounds like a strip club (that helped), but because I like the idea of a motorbike being a 'mistress'. MGMC is a fractional ownership club for luxury motorcycles in Lisbon Portugal. You pay an annual fee and you get to choose from the bevy of 'Mistress motorcycles'. The more you pay, the more quality alone time you get to spend with these bikes over the year. "We have a Ducati Diavel, a BMW S1000RR and a GS 1200, but we needed something unique to complete our fleet" says part owner Gonçalo Henriques. "Our goal was to have a dream garage for our members. First we were thinking of a Harley but we contacted Per from Wrenchmonkees, that we found in a Portuguese magazine called Rev and project Mistress was born!"

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1981 Kawasaki Z200 - Darizt Design

Imagine not being able to afford to buy any type of motorcycle. Not even the rustiest, crappiest, lowest of the low displacement bike that you wouldn't even play wee-wee firemen with it if an English rioter had agressively flambéd it. Then imagine living in a country that has a very limited selection of bikes. Then imagine (stay with us here) you have a dream to become a great custom bike builder. What do you do? Well, Agus Darizt from Java, Indonesia faced this problem a few years ago. So he worked out the only thing he could afford to customize was small scale model kits. He got so good at handling the super glue and plastic a friend asked Agus whether he would be interested in building a real bike for him. Of course he jumped at the chance and he hasn't looked back since. "I started from scratch," he says. "I learnt how to weld, how to use a bench lathe machine and refined my metal shaping techniques, and 5 months later the Preambule Orange CB100 (pictured below) was finished". Now three years later and Agus is up to his ninth bike, or "attempt number 9" as he humbly calls it. 

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2001 Kawasaki W650 - Tangara

Anyone who has visited our fair city of Sydney in the last 20 years will have probably had the dubious pleasure of riding on our mass transit system. Known as CityRail by it's employees and ShittyRail by the rest of us, it's main train is the once shiny but now fairly lack-luster 'Tangara', which is an Australian Aboriginal word meaning to go. Which they do, sometimes. Put simply, the trains are old, well-used work horses that are a little dangerous, fairly dirty, jury-rigged and manned by a bunch of nasty-looking guys who aren't that accustomed to being helpful or courteous. Which brings us to Seoul's Denver Cho and his well-used, dangerous, dirty, jury-rigged W650 "Tangara" Kwaka - which is more often than not manned by his good self, and by the look of him he's probably not that good at being courteous either.

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Kawasaki W650 - Blitz Motorcycles

Did you hear the one about the Frenchman, the Czechoslovakian tank and the Japanese bike? Sounds like a joke, right? But the punchline is this sweet W650 "Gentle Tracker", built by the Parisian guys at Blitz Motorcycles. When one of their customers came into the shop asking for a unique build and a very open brief, they obviously had a few ideas. But then when he mentioned the name of his business was Jawa Productions, they immediately thought they had to get their hands on an old Jawa tank.

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Imaginary Garage - 2011 Kawasaki W800

It's been a while since our last Imaginary Garage, and in that time we've had more than our fare share of smack talk in the comments sections of our beloved blog. It seems that everyone seems to know best, and everyone seems to have the world's best taste in customs. But let's face it, it's easy to talk the talk, but can you all walk the walk? What's that? You can? Well, here's you chance to damn well prove it! As you've probably noticed, above we have ourselves one brand splonking new 2011 Kawasaki W800, a sweet bike that were lucky enough to review recently. We've done a few dream bikes lately, but for a change we thought we try a more realistic bike this time around. So now it's up to you lot to take a modern classic and make it, well, classic-er. And kick ass-er as well.

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Review: 2011 Kawasaki W800

My Dad. Knows absolutely nothing about motorbikes bar their mechanical basics and (in his eyes at least) their inherent danger – that and whatever his still-sharp 60 year-old senses tell him. So picture the vista when I roll up to my parent’s farm for Mother’s Day on a brand new Kawasaki W800. Of course he knows that the last bike I reviewed was Zero’s brave but flawed Zero S, and he briefly casts his eyes over this new one as I rev it up to give him a listen to the engine. There’s a moment of deep contemplation, much like a Kung Fu master might do, then he calmly pronounces, “Another electric bike, is it?” I laugh out loud. An electric bike? “Come on! Just look at the thing,” I blurt, pointing out the two massive pipes hanging off the back. “I know it doesn’t look like an electric bike,” he replies. “But it sure does sound like one…”

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Kawasaki KZ400 Street Tracker

"The customer is always right." We've all heard the saying. It's based on the thought that if a company really wants to get ahead, they need to listen closely to what their customers want. Most of the time you dredge it up when your stuck in a tricky situation dealing with an airline hostess or rental car attendant. You know the feeling; you just want that second damn bag of tiny little peanuts and it just so happens that no, you don't care so much about the one-small-bag-of-nutty-snacks-per-passenger-rule thank you very much. So when a good customer of Maindrive Cycles in Texas asked them to build a street tracker using a Japanese bike, they needed a little convincing before they started. You see, Cory Hebert from Maindrive specialises in good ol' American bikes, and had never built a Japanese bike before.

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Deus Moulin Rouge

Here's a couple of sweet little videos from Deus starring their Moulin Rouge – don't worry, there's no sign of Nicole Kidman singing in either video. The first one (above) features beautiful shots of the W650 springer bobber, all set to the gravelly voice of Tom Waits. The second video shows the bike in action, being ridden around the back streets of Sydney.

If you want to see more pics of The Moulin Rouge, check out this gallery.

Imaginary Garage - 2010 Kawasaki Z1000 Bobber (updated)

Updated on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 by Andrew

After the first Imaginary Garage got such a good response, I thought I'd give it another go. For the record, I really love doing this kind of photoshopping. It's like building your dream bike without getting your hands dirty, or spending any money. Perfect for a big girl's blouse like me, so expect lots more.

This time I've chosen a 2010 Kawasaki Z1000. Why, you ask? Well, firstly because I think they are a great bike and a real step in the right direction for the company after a few years of some not-so-great nakeds. Secondly, when I saw the official photos from Kawasaki showing the black version of the bike in skeleton mode I honestly thought "wow". It looked way cool. Afterwards I couldn't get that image out of my head. It reminded me of the Confederate Fighter - more like a bike designed by machines than humans.

Then the other day I looked up the image again and had the proverbial light-bulb-above-the-head moment. I realised it looked like a bobber. Bingo:

So what makes a bobber? By definition, it's a bike with "the rear fender ‘bobbed’ or made smaller and all superfluous items removed to make it lighter." Guess we've got the "superfluous items removed" part covered, so let's add a fender and a seat to start with. I thought about how the fender would look for quite a while, and tried the classic curved style. It didn't work, of course. The styles were too different. 60's hot rod just doesn't go that well with 21st century Japanese tech, at least not on this bike. It needed to be more like the original design.

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