“Kawazuki”, the curious hybrid Kawasaki KLV1000

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If you don’t have resources or don’t want to invest money in creating a new motorcycle, nothing better than borrowing a motorcycle from a rival brand and creating a new one, this is the brief history of the Kawasaki KLV 1000.

In the mid-2000s, the green brand did not have any maxitrail in its catalog, and to solve it, it came up with a brilliant idea.

Instead of starting to design a new bike from scratch, creating a new engine and carrying a lot of expenses, why not borrow a ready-made bike?

Said and done, an unprecedented synergy was born between rival manufacturers: in Kawasaki they simply reached an agreement with Suzuki to borrow their maxitrail.

And so they took a V-Strom 1000, painted it a pretty canton orange, and renamed it the KLV 1000, just as it is, though it could just as well have been called a kawazuki, half Kawasaki, half Suzuki.

Image of the Kawasaki KLV 1000.
It was almost identical to the Suzuki V-Strom 1000 except for two small details.

The Kawasaki KLV 1000 was the brand’s first attempt to have a maxitrail in its catalog

Therefore, the cast aluminum chassis, the 43 mm fork, the rear monoshock absorber, the 19 and 17” alloy wheels, or the pair of 310 mm front brake discs with parallel two-piston calipers were the themselves.

The engine was also that of the V-Strom, obviously, the well-known V2 at 90 longitudinal degrees -4T, LC, 8V, DOHC- that delivered 98 CV which, by the way, is almost the same as that currently mounted on the V-Strom 1050 .

The instrumentation was mixed digital analog, fitted inside the semi-fairing equipped with double optics.

Image of the Kawasaki KLV 1000
It was Kawasaki’s first maxitrail, and it wasn’t a success…

The only visible differences with the Suzuki came from a three-position manually height-adjustable screen, larger hand guards, turn signals, engine side covers and satin black paint on the chassis and rear rack, in addition to the orange color, the only one in the one offered.

In 2004 it was priced at 11,000 euros, and it was on sale for only two years, until 2006 – it was enough to confirm that the idea was not brilliant. It was the first skirmish before his Versys 1000 was born in a wide family of versions, his own maxitrail equipped with a four-cylinder engine.

There is no doubt that this “Kawazuki” did not “sneak in” and if it looks like an SV 1000, sounds like an SV 1000 and works like an SV 1000, why would I buy a Kawasaki?

By sliding the slider you can compare both models.
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