The Quickshift
- Kawasaki Europe has just announced its 2025 Z650RS and Z900RS
- No hardware updates, but paintwork and graphics look great
- Retro graphics recall the heyday of the Kawasaki Zs in the 1970s
Kawasaki Europe has just unveiled its 2025 Z650RS and Z900RS, and we have the bad news first: if you were hoping for serious updates, there are none.
On the other hand, if you think the Z650RS and Z900RS are pretty great as they are and you were just hoping for a new, exquisitely retro paint job and graphics, then you’ll probably like what you see. To be honest, both are pretty great packages, so why fix something that isn’t broken, right?
Let’s start with the 2025 Kawasaki Z650RS. In Europe it will be available in three color variants: Ebony, Ebony/Green and Ebony/Yellow.
Kawasaki
Kawasaki
Kawasaki
Kawasaki is an interesting company, partly because it has the unique product range to make something as crazy as the Z H2 while also giving you exquisitely crafted modern classics like the Z650RS and Z900RS.
One reason for the company’s success in the modern classic category is that it understands what enthusiasts of these bikes want. These bikes are for people who love the color scheme and design of the Kawasaki Z classics from the ’70s, but want the modern conveniences and safety features you’d find on bikes 50 years from now.
That’s it. That’s the secret ingredient.
And by all the gods, it factories. I mean, just look at these things. If the color options on the Z650RS above didn’t convince you, check out the options on the 2025 Z900RS.
Kawasaki
Kawasaki
Kawasaki
The attention to detail is so goodincluding the pitch-perfect vintage logo font found on the tanks of all six of these Zs. But more importantly, it’s cool to see the same Ino Red colorway we saw on the 2025 Kawasaki Z900RS release in Indonesia earlier this year now making its way to another market on the other side of the world.
If you follow that thought further, you might notice that the stunningly beautiful Z900RS Cafe is nowhere to be found in Kawasaki Europe’s 2025 announcement. Still, the colors Europe gets for the RS are quite nice.
Which is your favorite, or are you waiting for a Z900RS Cafe Ebony colorway that may never appear? Let us know in the comments.
