The Connie? Not sure what you want to know. Back in the mid-80s, Kawasaki decided, very intelligently, to get into the sport-touring arena that had been basically dominated by BMW. They took a Ninja, hung wwhat turned out to be the best fairing ever for protecting the rider from the elements on it, a shaft drive, de-tuned the motor for more low-end and mid-range power, some easily removable and cavernous saddlebags and, Voila! Minimum investment on Kawasaki's part and a bike they could sell quite cheap relative to the competition. And, with very small changes in MY '93, the bike was the same and sold like hotcakes for 20 years ('86-'06). 10,500 redline. Very top heavy and takes some getting used to at slow speed due to it's 7.5 gallon tank. Once on the road, no problem and handles well. After laughing all the way to the bank for 20 years, Kawasaki finally had to succumb to the competition and released the new Concours 14 in '08. That bike has since 'spanked' all of it's competitors in every bike rag comparison to include the Beemer costing $5K more.
But, "never fly the 'A-model' of anything." Get at least a 2010 model if you want a newer 14; improvements were made. For a commuter bike and value for the $, there simply is no better bike; IMHO than a '93-'06 Concours. Some of these bikes have more than 200K on the clock!
Back in my motor-cop days here in WA, my motor partner had an '88 model Connie and I was an admitted Beemer-Snob then. We traded personal bikes for our 3 days off; he on my '87 K100RS and I on his '88 Connie. When we returned for work and traded back, my youthful BMW snob self could not admit that his Concours was a better bike, and he was humble enough to say that he liked my Beemer well enough.
There is a Concours Owners Group (COG) on-line that has an almost fanatical group of Concours owners and tons of information on the bikes.
