“Awe-inspiring energy and intensity,” like a “predator in a crouching posture, gathering its energy in preparation to strike.”
That’s how Kawasaki once described its sugomi design language, which roared through the mid-2010s on the back of its flagship supernaked street motorcycle, the Z1000.
As badass as that sounds, that bike ceased stalking American streets in 2016, with many believing we’d seen the last of such a beast.
For the 2026 model, however, its spirit returns to our shores with a vengeance in the form of the Z1100 SE ABS, the brand’s biggest and boldest Z model yet, making us wonder why it ever left in the first place.
Tuned-in torque
While the looks kind of speak for themselves, they are very much backed up by the guts, headlined by the bike’s beating heart, a liquid-cooled 1,099cc inline four, the largest-displacement engine to ever grace a Z.
From within the aluminum twin-tube frame, this caged animal roars to life, making a ferocious 134 horsepower at 9,000 rpm and 83.3 lb-ft of torque at 7,600 rpm.
