Much like all your favorite superheroes and supervillains, every mad shed-builder has an origin story. If I say the words "Kawasaki" and "two stroke" and "a nearly absurd number of cylinders," then chances are good that you might instantly picture the 48-cylinder Kawasaki Tinker Toy.
But before British shed builder Simon Whitelock built the Tinker Toy, which you can actually see running here, and which went on to fetch over $110K the last time it was up for sale, he built other things. Other classic Kawasaki two-strokes, even. Take, for example, a custom build he called the Kawasaki KH 606.
It's an inline-7-cylinder machine, carefully constructed from the remains of a pile of S1 250 Kawasaki engines. To build it, says Whitelock's friend Rick Brett, he of course had to modify pretty much everything else about the bike, starting with the frame. It, the seat, and the tank all ended up adding around four inches to their widths, right across the middle.
If you were to simply walk past this bike on the street and not really be paying attention, you might even look right past it. Compared to the 48-cylinder Tinker Toy that Whitelock would later go on to build, this guy is almost stealthy. Almost.
That is, of course, until you count the cylinders and start circling the bike, trying to get a closer look once you've clocked that it's most definitely not a standard vintage machine of any kind.
Whitelock build this bike back in 1999, at the turn of the century. According to Brett, he even taught himself new skills including welding and hydroforming in order to craft the exhaust you see here from scratch. In the video above, you can both see and hear it run.
At the time this video was shot, it sported a Michigan license plate, even though it originally started its life back in England. And sometime between the filming of the video above and the present day, it's made its way to a third country: Japan.
That's where we pick up the thread, because if this is the right kind of madness to float your particular boat, then it just might be your lucky day. See, right now, this very 7-cylinder Kawi is currently up for sale.
As you might expect, though, the asking price for this one-of-one creation isn't exactly cheap. A seller who's got it up for sale on Yahoo Auctions Japan is asking 12M yen for it. At the time of writing, that's a little over US $81K. ¿En esta economía?
That of course doesn't include any delivery costs or any other fees beyond the asking price of the seller. The auction is currently scheduled to end on Monday, July 21, 2025, so you still have some time to think about it if you really, really want.
Gallery: Kawasaki KH606 Two Stroke Custom 7 Cylinder
