Kawasaki W800 twin’s welcome return!

KAWASAKI HAS RELAUNCHED the W800 parallel twin with two new models, the W800 Street and W800 CAFE. The new Euro4 compliant twins are ‘90 per cent’ new with a whole host of styling, technical and practical changes, many of which are, at first, hard to detect.

Sharing a new chassis, each machine has powerful new ABS brakes, including a rear disc for the first time. Lighting is taken care of with LED bulbs. The W800 Street is a wide-barred naked roadster, while the W800 CAFE has a cockpit fairing, cafe racer seat and other cafe racer heritage fittings. Extras include factory carriers and crash bars.

Both the stripped-for-action 773cc bevel driven camshaft W800 Street and the W800 CAFE can trace their roots back over half a century to the original 1966 W1 650; at the time the BSA A10 based W1 was the largest capacity four-stroke machine manufactured in Japan.

Being fully A2 licence compliant the new W800 Street and W800 CAFE have been designed to attract new riders as well as tempting existing licence holders who are attracted by a motorcycle that is classic-styled but modern and reliable.

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