Revealed: Kawasaki’s plans for a more aggressive muscle cruiser – is this the Japanese Diavel?

Revealed: Kawasaki’s plans for a more aggressive muscle cruiser – is this the Japanese Diavel?

Kawasaki has filed a new set of patents for a future model that bears a striking resemblance to the Ducati Diavel. Well, it does in a Kawasaki kind of way.

The image above is directly from the patent office where Kawasaki has pushed through the design, we’ve put a picture of a Diavel below so that you can compare the two. This patent is solely concerned with the new top fairing for the bike. Given the amount of space below the fairing in the drawings, it’s entirely plausible that other patents, when filed, will feature bodywork which will sit around the top of the engine and steel frame.

There’s no information on the patent drawings about the size of the engine, but the bike is sufficiently different to the firm’s Vulcan range. The new design has a more aggressive pitch on the front with the petrol tank sat higher than on the current bike. The engine is hunched more forwards in a frame that looks shorter and also more aggressive than the current bike.

The riding position is also higher than you find on the Vulcan (above) and the bike is also getting a proper, wide cockpit fairing with a manually-adjustable screen. the cockpit fairing also pulls around to the ‘shoulders’ of the bike and includes the housing for the instruments.

The new bike will also have two headlights sat either side of a sharp-looking central slab of bodywork. The entire set-up looks similar to the front of a  ZX10R, albeit slightly relaxed in comparison to the sport bike sibling.