These graphics were present on most if not all of the 1972 machines and it has always been one of my favorite designs. It is hard to say which triple was the winner strictly from a visual standpoint but the S2 in red sure looked good to me. The S2 350 and the S1 250 had the most up-swept mufflers giving them a "racier" look than that of the lesser angled on the H2 750 or the nearly horizontal mufflers on the H1 500. This is a bike I owned at one point in time. I really enjoyed riding it regardless of it's size or power--it looked and sounded great to me.
Thanks for looking. Gary / kawasaki-yama-zuki
What strikes me straight away id the lack of Green! Makes me wonder when Kawasaki decided to use the green colour as a company identification symbol.
ReplyDeleteHello. Thanks for visiting and for your feedback. Green! You comment made me curious too. I knew the race bikes originally used red (G1M, A1R) and later switched to green but did not know why or what year. The KHI Japanese site has a nice racing history page here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kawasaki-cp.khi.co.jp/msinfo/history/index_e.html
In addition to a picture of the team it offers this explanation: "Kawasaki’s famous Lime Green paint was developed in 1968, and at the 1969 Daytona 200 the following year, all the A7RS and A1RAS factory race machines were cloaked in Lime Green. Until then, Kawasaki racers had usually been painted red, and green was considered an inauspicious colour at the time, so the new machines were greeted with surprise. However, subsequent success of the Lime Green racers led Kawasaki to adopt the colour as their official racing image colour."
Regards, Gary