Was There Ever an OEM Brown Color?

[crazy steve]

Here are pics from the brown NOS seat hump i bought in the States. Definitely not the Macho Maroon I know very well. I do not have red parts the make a comparson but i laid them next to my 74 Kawasaki Z1A parts in brown/red so you have a bit of a comparison. The written part number sadly was no longer readable.

That is the '79 Magenta Red, either somewhat faded or a poor match, maybe both..... I'll note here that I bought this same part in Macho Maroon for my '78E in '79 from the dealer and the factory color match was lousy. I believe the difference is the production line paint had a neutral gray primer applied first, this appeared to have been skipped on the replacement part.

[Mathh]

Thanks for the pics Mathh. But, I somehow think somebody will call it a shade other than "brown", lol

I think you might be right

[Mathh]

That is the '79 Magenta Red, either somewhat faded or a poor match, maybe both..... I'll note here that I bought this same part in Macho Maroon for my '78E in '79 from the dealer and the factory color match was lousy. I believe the difference is the production line paint had a neutral gray primer applied first, this appeared to have been skipped on the replacement part.

you have a picture of that color Steve?

[crazy steve]

I don't, but I remember it from visits to the dealer back in the day. It wasn't a very popular color; one reason was it did look more brown (and a rather muddy brown at that) than red under most lighting conditions and was rarely seen. Only offered the one year and only on the standard (and not in all markets), it was gone in '80. To see the 'red', you really need to have it in bright sunlight; in artificial light or on overcast days it dulled to brown. It looked gawdawful under fluorescent lighting.

The only picture I ever saw was one in the dealer brochure; all of the magazine ads I saw featured the Indigo Blue version. I know the dealer I bought my '78 from only ordered one in that color and had a hard time selling it.

[James England]

Nah, not brown, its a Euro Standard with BIG tank, black engine, further back footrests and rear indicators, certainly it looks brown in the pic but its a Black Gold paint, the sun picks out the gold giving the impression of being brown but in normal light they look like this

Yes, the original black paintwork had a dusting of gold flecks on top of the black and under the lacquer. It can just be made out on this pic