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Kahena Motorcycles
Obscure brand for
the day
(Guy 'Guido' Allen, April 2025)
Ever heard of Kahena Motorcycles? Don't feel bad if you
haven't.
The obscure Brazilian make was the brain child of Luiz
Gomi and José Biston, the gents behind the Amazonas
leviathans.
Like the Amazonas, the Kahena ran a Volkswagen flat four,
in this case a 1600 that was tuned up to 95 horses (71kW).
That fed a four-speed transmission with shaft final drive.
The source of the mechanicals makes sense when you understand that Brazil was a long-term manufacturing centre for air-cooled VW Beetles and Kombis. Over 3 million Beetles were made there.
Running a 26lt (6.9/5.7 US/UK gallon) fuel tank, it
weighed 317kg (698lbs) dry. A few different variants were
tried, including a sports version, a GT, plus a cruiser
and of course a police version.
Production lasted from 1992 to 1999. See the Wikipedia entry.
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Produced by AllMoto abn 61 400 694 722
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