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If you feel the need, the need for a very rare motorcycle, then look at the upcoming January 24-28 Mecum auction in Las Vegas. There, a 1984 Kawasaki GPZ900 Ninja motorcycle is under the gavel—a very, very rare pre-production model. In fact, it’s the first pre-pro I’ve ever seen offered for sale like this.
Lines very different from a modern superbike, but pretty hot stuff in the mid-1980s. Photo: Mecum Auctions
What’s a pre-pro?
In the world of motorcycles, before a model gets regulatory approval, the manufacturer will bring in pre-production machines that do not necessarily have government OK for usage on public roads. Typically these are used as show displays, or media bikes, or for other usage by the manufacturer (training purposes, etc.).
And typically, after a set amount of time, these bikes are destroyed. That’s what makes this GPZ a rare find.
The auction’s write-up
Mecum’s write-up on the bike points out what a unique find this is. There’s no point in us paraphrasing Mecum here, since they tell the tale well:
This unique 1984 Kawasaki Ninja 900-A1 is a pre-production machine built in Japan, which normally would have been crushed, as it was not tested or certified for sale. How it survived is a bit of a mystery, but what’s known is how it came to be discovered in Kawasaki’s dusty SoCal “loan pool” warehouse. This immaculate pre-production motorcycle shows a mere 5.8 push miles on the odometer, as the bike has never been ridden. It has been exhibited widely as the premier example of the first-year Kawasaki Ninja, including at the Guggenheim’s 1998 exhibit “The Art of the Motorcycle,” as well as at the traveling versions of the exhibit in Bilbao, Spain, and five additional venues; it’s been around the world, but only as a pristine display for the past 39 years. This Ninja comes with full documentation of its history, including the original brochures and exhibit catalogs, plus miscellaneous spare parts that came with the bike as presented.
This 1984 Kawasaki Ninja GPZ900-A1 was discovered by John Hoover, Director of Product Management at Kawasaki USA. A lifelong “motorcycle nut,” according to his wife Helen, John had found his dream job at Kawasaki, working first as a district sales manager in Kansas City; his first dealer meeting was in Hawaii in the spring of 1984, where the new GPZ900 Ninja was introduced. After four years he was offered a position in California as a marketing executive, where he advised on motorcycle designs and colors and founded the Kawasaki drag racing team. Another part of his job was overseeing the “loan pool”—motorcycles lent out to journalists for testing.
One of his hobbies was building motorcycles in his spare time, and in 1992 he had the idea to modify a 900 Ninja as a canyon carver; he searched the loan pool list for a suitable used bike and discovered an original 1984 900 Ninja that had zero miles, had never been serviced by a dealer and was built in Japan, not Lincoln, Nebraska, like the other GPZ900s. Not only that, the Ninja had a pre-production VIN—the kind of bike that is legally required to be crushed, as it has not passed type approval. Of course, John offered to buy the bike from Kawasaki, but the factory could not find any record of how it got to LA; possibly, it was built for the 1984 dealer launch. John recognized the value of the Ninja laying in its zero-mile pristine condition, so he carefully stored it, but did manage to secure a title via a friend with a dealership—a piece of legal chicanery perhaps best forgotten.
Very, very cool. Getting a pre-pro is hard enough, but buying one that was shown at the Guggenheim’s famous motorcycle exhibit? This may be a literal one-of-a-kind machine.
As seen at the famous Guggenheim Art of the Motorcycle exhibit! Photo: Mecum Auctions
A very significant bike
And to make things even better, it’s a GPZ900. You know, as ridden by Tom Cruise in Top Gun (and the 2022 sequel). The bike that introduced the Ninja line, arguably the first fully-faired superbike to grab public consciousness in North America. One of the highest-performance machines of its time, a bike that had a long second life as one of the world’s best sport tourers. Maybe not the most significant four-cylinder motorcycle of the 1980s, but it would deserve mention in that conversation!
A one-of-a-kind example of one of the greatest Japanese motorcycles ever made. Photo: Mecum Auction
Star of the auction?
Mecum lists this bike as the star of its late-January auction in Vegas, and it’s easy to understand why. But how much cash will it bring in? Hard to say, as in the past, vintage Euros, Brit bikes and Harley-Davidsons were where the money was at.
Now, though? The sportbikes of the 1980s and 1990s are finally cool again, and there will almost certainly never be another machine up for grabs with the same backstory as this bike. Whether or not that’s enough to drive up the price is another question entirely, and whether the traditional vintage bike enthusiasts would want to dump money into a GPZ is questionable.
One thing is likely, though. If the selling price is surprisingly low at the Mecum auction, chances are that won’t be the case the next time this bike is sold. If someone gets this bike at a bargain, they’ve probably found themselves a very nice investment.
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