WHEN US PUBLICATION Cycle Magazine road-tested the very first Kawasaki Z650 in 1976 it coined a phrase that would echo for a decade or more – the Universal Japanese Motorcycle, or UJM.
Far from being disparaging, they were predicting the future, saying: “In the hard world of commerce, achievers get imitated and the imitators get imitated. There is developing, after all, a kind of Universal Japanese Motorcycle... conceived in sameness, executed with precision, and produced by the thousands.”
Until 1976, there were only two Japanese manufacturers producing in-line fours. Honda, whose CB750 was by then looking a little elderly, and Kawasaki, whose Z1 was sweeping all before it when it came to insane power and questionable handling.
The Z650’s design, to which Cycle Magazine attached the moniker, was far from…
