Kawasaki Hid A Naked Superbike Under Its Best Retro Paint Yet
The perfect motorcycle for pretending your second retro naked bike is necessary.
Kawasaki has given the Japanese-market Z900RS a new paint job, and I’m beginning to suspect the company has been studying my financial weaknesses. It’s officially called "Candy-Toned Greenish Blue," which sounds more like a paint code generated by a committee than a color designed to ruin your afternoon.
In practice, it’s a rich metallic teal wrapped in slim gold graphics, polished metal, and just enough black hardware to keep the whole thing from looking like expensive patio furniture.
It’s also exclusive to Japan for now. The color joins the 2027 Japanese lineup, with the standard Z900RS priced at 1,507,000 yen (around $9,200 USD) and scheduled to go on sale August 1, 2026. Kawasaki hasn’t announced it for the US or other markets, which seems rather unfair considering America already gets the mechanically updated motorcycle as a 2026 model. Hopefully, this isn’t one of those gorgeous domestic-market colorways the rest of us can only admire through increasingly compressed internet photos.
I’m particularly susceptible to the Z900RS because one nearly ended up in my garage. Not too long ago, I was deciding between Kawasaki’s retro inline-four and the Yamaha XSR900. The Yamaha won, and its gloriously antisocial CP3 engine now greets me whenever I open the garage door. I’m perfectly happy with that decision. Unfortunately, happiness and wanting another motorcycle have never been mutually exclusive conditions.
That’s where the new color becomes dangerous. The Z900RS has always done an excellent job of pretending to be a respectful tribute to the original Z1. It has the round headlight, twin analog gauges, sculpted tank, ducktail rear section, and the general posture of something that should be parked outside a wood-paneled café. Candy-Toned Greenish Blue strengthens the disguise by making it look elegant, mature, and entirely suitable for a rider who definitely doesn’t make questionable decisions after the road opens up.
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Except underneath all the tasteful nostalgia is a 948cc inline-four producing 115 horsepower and 72 pound-feet of torque. The bike weighs 476.3 pounds ready to ride, so it isn’t some softly tuned retro ornament built exclusively for gentle Sunday cruising. It’s a properly fast naked motorcycle wearing the visual equivalent of a vintage dinner jacket. Calling it a naked superbike may annoy a few classification purists, but those people are probably too busy organizing spreadsheets to notice.
The latest update makes the contrast even better. Kawasaki added Electronic Throttle Valves, electronic cruise control, an up-and-down quickshifter, and an IMU-supported electronics package with Kawasaki Cornering Management Function. The engine also received revisions intended to improve low and midrange control while delivering stronger performance higher in the rev range. Somehow, Kawasaki squeezed all that into the Z900RS without replacing its lovely analog instruments with a tablet or making the bodywork resemble an angry robot insect.
That’s the real magic of this motorcycle. The retro styling isn’t compensating for outdated engineering. It’s hiding the fact that the Z900RS has become an extremely sophisticated, extremely rapid roadster with more technology than any machine dressed like this has a right to possess. The new paint simply completes the deception, making all that performance look tasteful enough to justify until the moment the inline-four starts screaming.
Source: Kawasaki
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