The Daytona 200 It’s one of my favorite races of the year. This year, I was looking at some historic photos of the race when I came across one from 1969. It was a faded Kawasaki photo showing five race bikes and racers decorated in color. green and white. Of course they are Kawasaki riders, they wear green jerseys.
Seeing that green brings back memories of my dad taking me to school in the 1980s in his green KZ440 and my own old Ninja 500. It’s the same color as many of the new Kawasakis you’ll find on the showroom floor, whether it’s dirt bikes, Jet Skis or even electric bikes. But that 1969 photo shows the now-famous painted Kawasaki for the first time.
But where did the Kawasaki Racing Green color come from? In 1969, Kawasaki was looking to impress at the most important race in the American calendar. in Daytona 200 The riders used the high bank of the iconic NASCAR superhighway, and the racers fought hard on the treacherous track. That 1969 race was also in color on TV, and Kawasaki wanted to stand out. And, the bikes did.
Kawasaki shocked the paddock with the factory’s 250cc A1RA and 350cc A7RA racing sets painted in green and white. Racers are superstitious and green is always an unlucky color. But the talented group of riders including Ken Araoka, Art Bauman, KMC staff Walt Fulton III, Dick Hammer and Cal Rayborn, have dropped the old superstitions and also donned green and white one-piece suits .
According to Kawasaki, 1969 KMC Country Sales Manager Don Graves and Country Marketing Director Paul Collins, worked with Akashi designer Chris Kurishima and famed Los Angeles painter Rollin “Molly” Sanders to create the color. this color. Sanders is best known as Paint by Molly for doing wild paint jobs on helicopters in Southern California. But Molly decided to reuse the green AMC Javelin for the racers. It’s basically a marketing ploy to make the bikes stand out.
It worked. The bikes are easily identifiable and although the color is not intended to be used around, it immediately becomes iconic. Green was consolidated into Kawasaki’s race color when the H2R “Green Meanie”, a two-stroke, three-cylinder, 748cc motorcycle was introduced. Gary Nixon won the AMA Road Race Championship on that bike in 1973. In the 1970s, green. Z1s . race very hard to beat. And, from 1978 to 1982, Kawasaki Racing Green almost always stood on the podium in the GP250 and GP350 races.
Although the cars didn’t win the Daytona in 1969, Kawasaki decided to lean towards a unique colorway. Not long after the Daytona 200, Kawasaki debuted this color on the 1969 F21M “Greenstreak”, a 238 cc race car.
However, Molly Sanders did not stop at the Kawasaki green. He’s also created Kenny Roberts’ iconic black and yellow flashing paint for his Yamaha racing bikes, the Buick Grand National logo with turbocharger swirling at 6, as well as racing colorways for Toyota.
However, green paint has a dangerous history and superstitious racers and artists have avoided it. For centuries, green paint was created from arsenic, and it literally burned itself in the artist’s oil painting. The dye is so deadly that some historians even think green wallpaper might have kill Napoleon Bonaparte. For racers, especially vintage ones, it’s considered good fortune. Oddly, however, green can be a bit safer on a motorcycle: It’s the first color a person’s optical sensor reads.
This year’s MotoAmerica Daytona 200 is scheduled for March 11th and you can be sure that there will be some green machines in front of the crew.
