Fizzies, Choppers, Scalextrics: pick just about any retro bike or toy and you’ll find a legion of blokes snapping up examples in order to relive their youth. For some though, it isn’t about owning another example of ‘my first bike’, it’s more a case of being able to buy something that they couldn’t own the first time around. Colin Matthews and his immaculate Kawasaki KE175 are a case in point…
Ever since the age of 13, Colin knew that all he wanted to do was work with bikes. Aged 16, he took a job at Huddersfield Kawasaki where he met brothers Phil and Brian Alford. At the time Phil owned a red KE175 and a third brother, John, owned a yellow version. ‘John didn’t work there, but he came in for parts’, remembered Colin. ‘His bike had about 70,000 miles on it. He used it all the time but it wasn’t far off immaculate.’
‘Knocking about on bikes’ with the Alfords, Colin was desperate to bag himself a KE, particularly Phil’s red example, and pestered both brothers to sell him theirs. Neither relented. ‘I’ll show them’, Colin thought, and instead bought himself a KMX200…
Now you might think that the larger, more modern, liquid-cooled motor in the KMX would allow it to easily see off an old air-cooled 175. But you’d be wrong. ‘We ran it side-by-side with Phil’s red KE and he beat me!’ Colin laughed. ‘That made me want to buy one even more.’
Another KE soon joined the pack, a green 1979/80 D-model - the last of the breed - though it wasn’t Colin who bought it. Instead it was Brian Alford, who’d decided to get one to match his brothers’. The bike became something of a project, though that didn’t really matter, as Colin explained: ‘Because we worked at a Kawasaki dealer and could easily get the parts we could go overboard on it - those bits we couldn’t chrome-plate we had plastic-coated.’ And gradually the little Kwaka was tidied-up bit-by-bit, Colin helping out whenever and wherever he could.