In the mid ’80s, Honda came out with a power cruiser (the original “muscle bike”) called the Magna that was built on a sportbike engine; the VF750/VF700 Interceptor engine.
Kawasaki answered Honda by coming out with the Eliminator line, which was a line of cruisers based on the Ninja four cylinder engines. Though the other sizes were only built for a couple of years, the 600 version, which was built on the original ZX600R (1984-spec) Ninja engine, was built all the way up until the mid-late 90s and was a pretty hot seller for a while. Kawasaki dropped the ball though when Honda redesigned the Magna 750 (its main competitor) in 1994, making it better than ever, and Kawasaki refused to similarly update the Eliminator 600.
Though the Eliminator line of power cruisers never quite met with the same success as Honda’s Magna and Yamaha’s V-Max, they were highly successful in their own right.
To call their new 125cc trainer bike the Eliminator considering the heritage behind the Eliminator name in their lineup is wrong on soooooo many levels.