Original Ninja

摘要

Paging through the Kawasaki Ninja 900 test I wrote for the May, 1984, issue of Cycle World was like stepping into a Way-Back Machine, memories of astonishment flooding back. When I first rode the GPz900 during a press launch at Laguna Seca, it was unreal not only how much better the bike was compared to the competition, but also how the bike defined the future form of high-performance motorcycles.rnIt was a different era, a time when four-cylinder motorcycles kept getting bigger and wider and longer and heavier. Air-cooling was the norm, alternators sticking out from the end of crankshafts, cam chains centered between the left and right sets of cylinders, and displacements constantly rising.