Yeh that's what the woman at hustler told me. Apparently Kawasaki didn't want their motors out in the mass market,Lowes,Home Depot,et et for obvious reasons. There's already two service bulletins out on the Kohler 7000 series I think one is for the Smartchoke and another one for casting flaws which cause problems with the fuel pump. I'll take a manual choke over the Smartchoke any day. I'm real happy with the Kawasaki it's too bad about Kohler, I have an older cub cadet with a Kohler command and it's been a good motor too bad engineers need job security and have to mess with something that already works fine. Hustler was very good once I got to the right people, I've been jerked around by a couple shops and the last straw was when my mower came back and was shooting pulses of gas out of the carb not to mention they left it running with the blades on for 5 hours!! When the regional rep got to my house he had a brand new sd with a Kawasaki on it, we had to push the old mower onto the trailer because the guy was afraid it would catch on fire. Gas was just spraying right onto the exhaust, what kind of shop delivers your mower like that?? Even worse the independent delivery guy spotted it and told the shop they replied yeh we know it's leaking we couldn't get the thingy lined up on the carburetor. You can still find some raptor sd's with Kawasaki motors on them there's still a few out there.