KZ900A5 - who's right?

Common dogma has it that the KZ900A5 bike was assembled from remaining parts from the 1976 KZ900A4 model run. They are referred to as an 'uncommon' to 'rare' bike and the Kawasaki Guru Dave Marsden (Original Kawasaki) states that only a few were produced after the end of the 1976 KZ900A4 production run. If you look at the frame VIN given on the www.zedder.com site (and many of us tend to accept the site completely) you'll note that over 5000 were produced...this is more than a 'few' bikes. Who's correct?

there's a fair number of them in circulation. Many of the later A5's have a mix of parts on them. You'll see kz1000 front-ends on some of them. If you look at the Kawasaki microfiche, you see a few different parts listed on the A5's - including a solid-state 4-way flasher relay.

Roughly 5200 produced in 77
Z1F-510341 - Z1F-515578
The fiche list both brown and green as the colors - although I've not seen a brown version.

Considering only 10,000 produced at the Lincoln factory in 76, 5,000 in 77 is a high percentage.

Bear in mind Kawasaki was just ramping up producting in Lincoln. Parts imported from Japan could easily be 4-6 weeks of more in transit, so it's fairly easy to understand why they had so many parts in stock.