Who better to tell the story of the W if not Kawasaki?
Here is the Historic page of the W, where it’s life long story is told, since 1965 W1, even mentions the “Prologue” in of the form the Meguro K2.
This has a special importance as the story of this bike has gone full circle.
Meguro was the original motorcycle company, and it was bought by Kawasaky. Along the time the Meguro brand was put a sleep, but kawasaki has just revived it, and started to sell the Kawasaki W800 as the Meguro K3 in Japan.
A long the way under the brand kawasaki “W”, the group sold a lot of wonderful motorcycles, being in 1999, the first ones to reach the market of the revival motorcycle, in a period even Triumph had lost it’s way.
Wrong timing, and low power in a time where the street fighters were all the rage, basically made it a very small niche motorcycle.
Do note, that at launch, and for a long time, W650 was considered more faithful to the original triumphs than the bonnie version being sold new.