First off, name the dealers... We have a few Ohioans on here who might know a thing or two about them. I was born and raised in Ohio, spent 9 years in Columbus... not even a year yet in FL.
I know zero about the Kawasaki card, but imagine that it's not much more than a regular loan, with the option of adding more shit to it later on (like gear, parts, labor, etc)... Probably only good at the Kawasaki dealer, much like a department store card. It might, possibly, have a low APR, but those cards are notorious for having ricockulously high interest rates.
As far as using a CC to buy the bike outright... if done properly you can save a ton of money, but you have to be very, very careful.
Generally speaking, if you use the CC to buy something big and don't pay it off immediately the APR will fuck you. Judging by your reference to your parents, I'd say you're probably a young guy... Therefore, you're likely to only get approved for cards with ginormous APR's... like 18-22%. Ballpark right in the middle at 20%, and even if you make 3x the minimum payment (of the original statement), it'd take you about 14 months to pay it off, and you'd pay about $1k in interest.
And BTW, your minimum payment would be like $136 for the first month - but all cards having different ways of calculating minimum payments so it could be more/less (this was 1% of the balance, plus interest). I kept the payment at 3x the original minimum payment, just for ease of calculation. Oh, and your first month's interest... yeah, that's $81.
Now, check this... You go into the dealer, finance a bike outright... get a 15% interest rate over a 72 month loan... Your minimum monthly payment is about $135. Pay 3x that rate for long enough to pay it off and you'd save a little more than 5% in interest.
Here's where it gets fun... and complicated...
Balance Transfers. Regardless of how you buy the bike in the first place, credit card or standard loan, you can drop your interest down to 0% by transferring the balance onto a credit card. It's a little known fact that you can do balance transfers on pretty much ANYTHING with an account number (auto loans, deliquent bills... hell use your SSN and you can balance transfer back taxes!).
What you need to do is to get a new card that offers balance transfer at 0% introductory APR (generally it will be offered for 6-15 billing cycles). Transfer whatever loan you use onto that card (or just use a card with a 0% introductory APR offer on purchases). Make your payments, as best you can... all of that money will go towards the principle (cutting your minimum payment in half as well).
The problem with doing this is two fold.
1) If you don't pay it off during that introductory period, you'll have to get another card and do another balance transfer to keep your 0% status. Otherwise, you'll jump to 20% or whatever at the end of that term. That could be a pain in the ass, but if you can save a considerable amount of scratch, it might be worth it right?
2) Balance transfers aren't free. Generally you're looking at 3-5% of the balance being transferred assessed as a fee. Even so, you're STILL saving money over 15% or whatever your original line of credit charges. If you do multiple BT's, you'd still probably save money as each time you do one the cost goes down because you'll be transferring a smaller balance.
I just sent in for a new credit card and am transferring my truck and bike loan balances... 0% until April of '09. If I continue making the same amount of payments, yeah I'll have to do another BT or two, but I'll have that shit paid off in 2 years. If I just continue to pay the original loans, it'll be 2 years until I pay off my truck and another 5 years to pay off my bike... who knows how much interest at that point...
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