Kawasaki has just taken the cover off a pair of new 500 twins at EICMA! The new Kawasaki Ninja 500 and Z500 are a new take on an old idea. Half-liter engines were once a very important part of Kawasaki’s lineup, and it’s quite interesting to see Kawi back with an all-new engine in this category.

Errrr, not quite all-new. Details are still spotty, but it sounds like this is actually a repackaging of the same 451cc powerplant that first appeared in the Eliminator cruiser, which was itself an evolution of the 400 twin found in the Z400 and Ninja 400. But, it’s still a big move forward for Kawasaki, which appears keen to take Honda’s 500 lineup head-on.

This is the SE variant of the Z500. It comes with such niceties as a TFT dash, USB-C charger and flash paint. Photo: Kawasaki

As it’s A2-compliant for the Euro market, we will see max output of 47 hp. Count on roughly 32 lb-ft of torque, since that’s what the Eliminator makes. The bikes are supposed to have more torque and require less revs than the older 400 models.

The Ninja 500 and Z500 are basically the same machine—one is dressed up with a fairing, and one isn’t. They both have a budget-friendly steel trellis frame (short frame/long swingarm-style chassis) and LCD dash, but if you pay more, you can have either bike with a Bluetooth-enabled TFT dash and USB-C charging port.

That’s about all we know for now; the Euro website doesn’t even list the weight of these bikes, and they’re not featured on the Canadian or US websites yet. But we expect these machines in North America sometime in 2024, with pricing obviously between the current 400 model and the 650 models. And we’ve got to ask two questions: First, does this new 500 series portend the end of the long-running 650 series? And second, after wanting a Versys-X 400 for several years, perhaps we’ll be rewarded with a Versys-X 500 instead?