Actually Kawasaki has been very popular since Kawasaki Sunrock first started to CKD big motorcycles in the early 90s.

EN500 Vulcan was CKD, ZZR250 was CKD, ZXR250 too was CKD... and they were all hugely popular those days.

I think Kawasaki Sunrock was the first to officially CKD big bikes.

Then Yamaha followed suit with the XV535... but when shit hit the fan at the end of that decade, they stopped CKD-ing big bikes. For a few years during and after the economic meltdown, apa pun tarak... nobody could afford to buy fancy big bikes even CKD ones, except the filthy rich who'd buy CBU bikes and grey imports.

The big bike CKD business only started to recover after 2005. After 2010, it started to boom. Sekarang, meriah gilababi.

This post has been edited by ZZR-Pilot: Jun 9 2017, 02:22 PM

There is no factory that manufactures big bikes in Malaysia.

They're all from outside Malaysia, brought in either in CBU form or CKD.

When he said Msia models different from Thai models, depending on what bike you're talking about he could mean that they have different sources for the same parts.

For example, Kawasaki in Thailand might find it more economical to use certain tyre brands that are available locally there while Malaysia might use whatever that's economical here. Same tyre specs, different brands. Ditto the fluids like engine oil, same specs different brands.

Sometimes, Kawasaki might import parts from OEM factories outside of Thailand. And that would make Msia models arguably different from Thai ones.

I think it's the same logic as when buying CKD cars.

Overall, unless the difference in quality and reliability is glaring, IMHO it really doesn't matter. No reputable motorcycle brand would allow vast discrepancies in performance and quality across the region anyway.