#Z900RsCafe

Time really does fly. Hopping onto the laptop for my morning coffee and daily fix of the American Dream, Facebook informs me that I joined it ten years ago. What? How is that possible? A lot of people my age refused to take the FB plunge, but that’s okay because I still see what they’re up to on Instagram, via random text and on the news ( David Pecker). I tweet but rarely.

We probably didn’t really need to compare the Honda CB1000R and Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe since they’re polarized enough in the looks department to make it appear that potential consumers will be drawn to one or the other – and their performance and mission statements both are close enough on paper to make them more or less interchangeable, aren’t they? I think we really just wanted an excuse to ride both of them again, they’re both such charismatic motorcycles. Everybody wants to hang out with them. What is a café racer? One that flits from Starbucks to Starbucks? Close enough for us.

I’ve been in the motorcycle biz for over 20 years, and it takes a special bike to wow me. Kawasaki crafted a great modern yet classically-styled machine when it created the Z900RS, and I’ve enjoyed it every opportunity I’ve had to throw a leg over one. Still, the Z900RS was just another nice motorcycle. I wanted a little something extra. From the moment I pulled onto the road on the new 2018 Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe, I had a pretty good idea that I’d found the bike I’d wanted to ride every time I was on the Z900RS.

From the moment that the Kawasaki Z1-inspired Z900RS was announced in October of last year, enthusiasts have been saying they wanted the model to go even further into the retro-racer styling. Just a month later, large portions of the rest of the world received the word that their dreams had been made real in the form of the Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe. Naturally, riders in the U.S. market wanted to know why they weren’t going to be allowed to own this strikingly-styled version of the RS.

Being the Canada-based staffer of a primarily U.S.-targeted site like Motorcycle.com, it’s hard not to feel jealous of my American colleagues sometimes. In between minding the three-hour time difference between me and the other MO editors, and remembering to omit the “u” in words like “color” and “rumor”, I get to read about their exploits in sunny California from my desk in grey gray Toronto.