The historic ‘Meguro’ marque may not be familiar to many outside of Japan. But without Meguro there would be no Kawasaki.
This history. Meguro Manufacturing began producing motorcycle parts in 1924 for the nascent Japanese motorcycle industry. After the 1929 Wall Street crash, Meguro invested in Harley-Davidson and obtained drawings, tooling and important knowledge of metal heat treatments in order to make gearboxes.The resulting transfer of American knowhow taught the Japanese how to produce motorcycles in quantity.
In 1935, Meguro debuted their first complete motorcycle, the Z97 500cc single, based on a Swiss Motosacoche design.
Meguro Z97
Motosacoche Model 413 (1930)
In the 1950s, Meguro entered racing and built its first twin-cylinder design, the 651cc T1 “Senior”.
In 1960 they launched the ‘K’ series “Stamina” model. The ‘K’ was a licenced copy of BSA’s A7, albeit better made, such that this was the first time Triumph’s Edward Turner considered Japanese motorcycles to be a threat.
Despite the success of the ‘K’, other Meguro models sold poorly and they got into financial difficulty, so the Kawasaki Aircraft Company bought part of Meguro forming Kawasaki-Meguro. In October 1964, seeing the commercial and marketing value of a motorcycle division and Meguro’s established sales outlets alongside its heavy industry operations, Kawasaki took full control of the company, retired the Meguro brand, and the Kawasaki Motorcycle Corporation was born.
But they didn’t forget. On this day in 2020, Kawasaki breathed life back in to Meguro, announcing a new model - the W800-based K3 (only available in Japan).
It could be argued that the W800 is actually based on the Meguro ‘K’ (the licenced version of the BSA A7). So what we’re saying is, the new Meguro K3 is a modern retro roadster that’s based on an old roadster that helped launch Kawasaki’s entire motorcycle business.