The Hawk is hard to find? Sorry, I’m in Southern California and I can find several on craigslist on any given week, though they are usually more than $2000. It got on the list because there are few sport bike type bikes that are beginner friendly, and I wanted to include as many as possible. The easy choices in that category are the Ninja and GS500.
The 1996 Kawasaki ZL600 made 61HP, the 1986 made more, about 70. In HP and torque it makes less than the SV650, which everyone thinks makes a great beginner bike.
I would love to put the supermotard bikes on there, but I was trying to list only bikes with low buy in prices. though it does look like you can get the smaller ones used pretty cheap, so I will add them. I think I got caught in the same trap that confuses many beginners, the model name alphabet soup. Unless you are very familiar with the manufacturers offerings, its easy to get confused between the play bikes, enduros, dual sports, and motards. Many of them with just a 1 letter difference in name.
