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The 1986 Kawasaki GPZ400S was an unusual entry, bringing a parallel-twin to a domestic market dominated by four-cylinder machines. Aimed at demand for basic twins in Europe and the US, it was overshadowed at home by the massively popular GPZ400R.
Choosing to go with a twin in an era where the inline-four was gospel — this bike wasn't defying its era. Its origin, being literally half of the GPZ900R's four-cylinder, was itself the result of pushing rationality to its conclusion. Whether it sold is a separate matter from whether it was philosophically right. The fact that today's Ninja 400 and Z400 are loved as twins is, in a sense, a belated answer to the question the GPZ400S was asking.
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Why was four-cylinder basically mandatory in the domestic market?
During the replica boom, high-revving, high-output four-cylinders were the status symbol, so twins inevitably got seen as kind of plain.
Bugs me that the article doesn't give concrete sales figures or pricing from back then.
Even as another 400 twin, it probably targeted a different type of rider than the Zephyr line.
Hearing it was popular overseas, looking at it from a reverse-import angle gives it a different kind of appeal.
Exactly that, looking at the current revival boom, I think this kind of twin-cylinder model is exactly what deserves a re-evaluation.
It says it got overshadowed by the GPZ400R, but honestly in a domestic market so devoted to four-cylinders, it was probably always going to be an uphill battle.
The GPZ400S, launching a parallel twin domestically in that era was a genuinely bold move.
