To The Crusher - Kawasaki GPZ305

It's the early 1980s. Kawasaki's Z250T Scorpion is an attractive lightweight, uncomplicated machine. It has  a modern rectangular headlight and clean lines. An unstressed engine on a naked machine, which fits the time and the place perfectly.

So what do Kawasaki do?

They tart it up to look like the-then supersports GPz range and call it a GPz305. Swoopy fairing, racing red with silver and blue pin stripes. It looks great on the big GPz750 and 900R, but just makes the tiddler look like a sinking gondola on wheels. Think of how twattish small people look in baggy clothes and stacked heels and you get the picture.

They bored the 248cc parallel twin motor out to 306cc to produce one of the most powerless motorcycle engines of vaguely modern times. When questioned about the machine, an ex-Kawasaki mechanic from a dealership of the time said, quote, "fucking absolute dry turd."

The camshafts seized in the head (they ran with no head bearings) had camchain problems (automatic tensioners never actually tensioned anything.) It was as if Kawasaki felt that painting it red with a matt black motor was enough to make it a sportsbike. The black paint flaked off the motor as soon as you did anything as radical as starting it up or turning it off.

The build quality on the 305 was so paper-thin that the wheels furred up at the first indication of poor weather. And even if you could force the practical side of your nature to accept that the GPz305's belt final drive was in fact a useful addition through the ravages of a winter, what's the bloody point when all that was left un-corroded after a couple of months outside was the belt itself? And to think this abomination lasted from 1983 right up until 1996!

To the Crusher, foul underpowered beast!