What Kawasaki’s W800 should be like

What price for a W800 Scrambler? £8,499 as it turns out.

IF you work for Kawasaki’s R&D department and happen to be reading this, take note; this is what the W800 can look like with a bit of thought and effort.

Now there’s little wrong with the W800 as standard. It’s under-appreciated as an alternative to a Triumph Bonneville, probably largely thanks to carrying a Kawasaki badge instead of Triumph script on the tank. But given the fact that retro-styled scramblers seem to be gathering momentum at the moment – to the point that Ducati will launch one later this year – wouldn’t it make sense for Kawasaki to get in on the action and do something similar?

Triumph already does it with its own Bonnie-based scrambler – arguably the best-looking version of the British retro range – and if this one-off machine is anything to go by, Kawasaki could very easily follow suit.

This bike is actually the work of Earnshaws Motorcycles in Huddersfield, and is being offered at £8,499 as a brand new bike via the firm’s eBay store

That’s around £1,500 more than the stock W800, but the style alone makes it well worth the extra in our eyes. Earnshaws is making a ‘limited number’ of the bikes, allowing customers to choose colours and details like the exhausts when they order.