Exceedingly Rare Museum Grade 1976 Rickman CR900 Kawasaki KZ900 Powered

Long live the Café Racer. While a quintessentially English creation, by the 1970s and '80s, café racers were more commonly built with either a Japanese or an Italian engine. The Rickman brothers, Don and Derek, were smart enough to move with the times, and they built a new chassis to house the stout new 4 cylinder motors from Honda and Kawasaki, as their standard chassis was simply not on par with the best handling British machines. Rickman became a motorcycle factory after selling successful chassis kits from 1960 onwards that were replicas of the brothers' successful motocrossers. Road race and café racer frames followed, which housed motors from Triumph or Velocette, and by the early 1970s, Rickman production was all the way up to 4,000 bikes per year as it earned a license as an official manufacturer able to sell whole machines on showroom floors. The Rickman frame became ever more popular when a new generation of ill-handling Japanese fours arrived on the scene in the early 1970s. Rickman Kawasakis and Rickman Hondas soon became some of the most desirable motorcycles of period, and it remained that way until early 1980s. The Rickmans earned great praise from riders and the press for their transmutation of the heavy 4 cylinder bikes into graceful and beautiful café racers. This Rickman Kawasaki was originally imported to the U.S. by Craig Vetter. It's a rare four pipe CR900 Kawasaki version, which still bears its original dealer's sticker on the fairing and has a stunning red-gold color scheme that includes the gold Ceriani magnesium wheels. It also features triple Lockheed disc brakes and a tuned engine, all of which are housed in absolutely stunning bodywork. The Rickman Kawasaki is a fanciful creation, one that is quite simply the ultimate café racer of the early late 1970's.