Dr Mike Yeadon

https://www.motorcyclesunlimited.co.uk/ I like a well turned out classic bike as the next person, but £30,000 for a Kawasaki Z1 900, 1973? It does look as new and appears to have been subjected to a painstaking restoration. Oh, for a more innocent time in which to enjoy such toys! I don’t know the proprietor, Frank, but I’ve been aware of him for most of my born again biker days (turn of the century). He was famous for importing copious quantities of US supplied Japanese bikes. It looked like he or a US agent was scooping up hopelessly unwanted machines that U.K. buyers lusted after. He’d source exclusively from Texas, Arizona, Nevada, California and as a result, they were never rusty but usually utterly sun blasted. These are an ideal basis for restoration because most parts can be refinished, replacing gaskets, diaphragms, paint etc and they would then be essentially as new. I was tempted, but all the projects I bought were originally U.K. supplied. These prices in my opinion do not reflect what’s happening generally to the classic vehicle market. I’ve watched valuations almost halve over the last 5-10 years. My Suzuki GT750A was, at its best, among the best examples on the road, and speculation was that potentially it’d fetch £18,000. As I paid £3,000 for it as a project in 2009 and spent the same again making it pretty and perfect, I just laughed at the numbers. We who might want one are ageing out and there’s no one behind them. Kids who came of age in 2000 are hardly likely to want a two stroke heavyweight, just as I wasn’t interested in a Norton Commando. An incidental plus of machines of this vintage is that they have no computers. They’re the last things for some of us of a wholly analog world. Best wishes Mike 👉 https://t.me/DrMikeYeadon