New Kawasaki Concours - 2008 Concours 14

The new new 2008 Kawasaki Concours

The Kawasaki Concours has a couple of things in common with the Yamaha Vmax, it’s been around essentially unchanged almost forever (introduced in 1986) and it has a very dedicated following of owners who absolutely love it. This year, though, Kawasaki finally decided to bring the bike into the 21st century and they are introducing the Concours 14 and Concours 14 ABS as 2008 models that will show up in dealers early in 2007. They just happened to have a superb platform as a starting point, the new ZX14, which was modified a bit for touring duty to produce what should be one lightning quick cross country machine.

new 2008 Kawasaki Concours - rear view

It’s no secret that a lot of the hypersport machines like the venerable ZX11 and the suzuki Hayabusa, were and still are purchased for long distance road use. If you’ve never put any miles on one of these machines, you can’t appreciate how well suited for touring duty they really are. But anyone who wants to do that needs to add decent bags of some sort, a better windshield and a few other odds and ends to tweak the machine to better serve the owner’s intentions. Kawasaki did all of the work up front with the new Concours 14 and I can see it swinging a few purchasers away from the big Z as well as pulling a lot of old Concours owners back into the dealers.