A naked version of the Ninja 400 is on the way and we are here for it
You guys remember Kawasaki’s Ninja 400, right? The fantastic new lightweight ninja that dropped last November and set the small-bike world on fire? Of course you do. We love it, you love it, hell, everyone loves it. Now, after a period of will-it-won’t-it, it seems that it seems like the Ninja’s getting naked with a new Z400.
So, how do we know? Two ways—intuition and some very interesting filings with the California Air Resources Board. First, the baseless speculation intuition. Most models in the Ninja family have a cousin in the Kawasaki nudist colony, as it were. Ninja 250? Z250. Ninja 1000? Z1000. See where we’re going here? It stands to reason that since the Ninja 300—the bike replaced by the Ninja 400—had a Z-series cousin the 400 would eventually get one too. Makes sense, right? The 300cc-sized hole left in Kawasaki’s naked lineup could be filled very well by a Z400.
Then there are those CARB filings. Apparently Team Green showed its hand recently when it filed new emissions documents with CARB showing that in 2019 there will be two models in the 400cc slot—the aforementioned Ninja 400 and something called the ER400DK. Interesting! See, in Kawasaki-speak, the “ER” prefix indicates a naked bike. We’re not sure what the “D” means, and we’re pretty sure “K” is just a designator for the 2019 model year. There’s also the fact that the old Z300 was known internally as the ER300BG in its last years, so there’s that.
SOURCE: California Air Resources Board
