Can someone give some insight into how the tandem twin Kawasaki KR250s and KR350s were distributed between riders and countries in between 78 and 83.
I know that the US had some, which Eddie Lawson, Yvon Duhamel and others Kawasaki US team riders rode (Ron Grant?), I think the Americans were the first to get them as they ran the initial development programme. The Japanese ran Akiyo Kiyohara and Masahiro Wada in the World Champs and I presume at home too, the UK had Mick Grant and Barry Ditchburn on them and Kork Ballington's bikes, I think, were nominally run out of the UK, although how much he had to do with Kawasaki UK I don't know. Anton Mang ran his out of Germany, Jean Francois Balde and Jean Louis Guignabodet ran out of France and Greg Hansford out of Oz. I think these were all official works bikes, even if Mang's bikes weren't perhaps the same as the others due to Seppi Schogl's influence and the US team went their own way in developing their bikes.
Eddie Stollinger also ran Kawasakis for quite a while, but I don't know much about his bikes whether they were works bikes and if so who backed him, Kawasaki Austria? I am similarly lacking in knowledge about Pierre Luigi Conforti's bikes, was that a Kawasaki Italy effort? I know Herve Gullieux ran a KR250 in '83, which I guess was an old Kawasaki France bike and I think was a privateer effort.
I have also seen reports that some American privateers ran them and occasionally came across to Europe to compete on them. Sorry I've forgotten the names of these riders. So I wonder how and where did they get their hands on them because the other works bike, do not seem to have been released to privateer riders at all? Unless of course Stollinger, Conforti and Gullieux ran ex-works bikes. If so how did they manage to get hold of them and how was it that no British privateers ever run a KR, especially given that Kawasaki UK seem to have had quite a few bikes.
Edited by brands77, 03 February 2023 - 14:30.