Kawasaki sets date for new KLE unveiling
A year after Kawasaki started teasing its latest KLE model, the bike - assumed to be a 500 - is just days from being revealed.
Well, we know what we’ll be doing on Friday: taking a closer look at the new Kawasaki KLE model. Kawasaki has set the date for the bike’s unveiling, and whereas we had previously predicted an EICMA reveal, it turns out we’ll be getting the bike sooner.
A new teaser video released on Tuesday gives a slightly clearer view of the forthcoming model. Team Green still isn’t sharing displacement, but most industry observers assume the new bike will fit into the A2 licence/500cc segment.
If that’s the case, one would assume the KLE500 to be driven by the same 451cc parallel twin engine that’s at the heart of Kawasaki’s Eliminator 500 cruiser and Ninja 500. In both cases, the engine promises an A2-friendly 45 bhp and 31.4 lb-ft of torque.
In addition to offering an unveiling date of 24 October, the latest video also gives us a better sense of what the bike will actually look like. A silhouette shows a bike with a rugged, off-road-friendly stance - one that appears to be equipped with a 21-inch front wheel. This suggests that Kawasaki is keen to get back into a part of the adventure bike segment that it’s largely ignored over the past two decades.
The iconic single-cylinder KLR650 is still lauded by dual-sport enthusiasts in the United States and Australia, but it hasn’t been sold in the UK since 2002. Meanwhile, the last time we saw a KLE500 being sold in UK showrooms was 2007.
And back then, the KLE500 was a little more road-focused. Roundly criticised by British journalists, it was quickly replaced by the KLE650 - better known as the Versys 650 - a bike that is worthy of all sorts of praise but very clearly isn’t the sort of thing you’d use to explore green lanes.
This new KLE seems to be Kawasaki’s attempt to rectify things, offering up a machine that - in silhouette, at least - gives off certain Yamaha Tenere 700 vibes.
Meanwhile, Friday’s reveal may be sooner than we were expecting, but it’s actually pretty late if you consider the fact that this is almost certainly the machine that was being teased last year at EICMA and Motorcycle Live.
The messaging in this latest video (and the one that appeared earlier this month) is the same as was seen at Kawasaki’s stand at both moto shows in 2024. A display featured an off-road tyre on a spoked wheel (with a single brake disc) bursting out of a box, and the words “Life’s a rally,” and “KLE.”
We’re not sure why it’s taken Kawasaki a full year to pull the covers off this bike, but now that it’s just days away from being revealed, we’re pretty excited.
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Chris Cope is a fourth-generation journalist, originally from Texas. He has lived in the UK for roughly two decades and has been writing about motorcycles for most of that time. He has written for dozens of publications and websites in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
