Last year, Kawasaki brought back the Eliminator nametag after almost a decade-long hiatus. In India, we had the Eliminator with a 175cc air-cooled single cylinder engine that was jointly manufactured by Kawasaki and Bajaj but was soon discontinued. Bajaj did launch the Avenger which was heavily inspired by the Eliminator but it didn’t use a Kawasaki engine.
The new model borrows design cues from the OG Eliminator with a round headlamp, raked out front end, smooth curvy fuel tank followed by a low seat. In terms of features you get all-LED lighting, an LCD instrument cluster with Bluetooth phone connectivity and slip and assist clutch.
It is powered by a 451cc liquid-cooled parallel twin with outputs of 45PS and 42.6Nm. It is underpinned by a steel trellis frame and has a kerb weight of 176kg, which should make it quite easy to ride. Suspension duties are handled by conventional telescopic forks upfront and twin suspension at the rear, while braking is taken care of by 310mm and 240mm disc brakes at the front and rear respectively.
While globally it is offered in two variants – Standard and SE, we only get the former which is mechanically the same as the higher variant but misses out on extra bits like a bikini fairing, and front and rear cameras. The Eliminator has competition in the form of the Benelli 502C (Rs 5.85 lakh, ex-showroom) at a similar price point, while there are also more affordable options from Royal Enfield like the Super Meteor 650 (Rs 3.70 lakh onwards) and the upcoming Shotgun 650.
