Suzuki Motorcycles

About Suzuki

Suzuki Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Minami-ku, Hamamatsu, Japan, which specializes in manufacturing automobiles, four-wheel drive vehicles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal combustion engines.

In 1909, Michio Suzuki (1887–1982) founded the Suzuki Loom Works in the small seacoast village of Hamamatsu, Japan. He was making looms, did some cars for a short time, faced cotton market collapse in 1951 and so he came to new products.

Suzuki's first two-wheel ingenuity came in the form a bicycle fitted with a motor called, the "Power Free." Designed to be inexpensive and simple to build and maintain, the 1952 Power Free featured a 36 cc, one horsepower, two-stroke engine. An unprecedented feature was the double-sprocket gear system, enabling the rider to either pedal with the engine assisting, pedal without engine assist, or simply disconnect the pedals and run on engine power alone. The system was so ingenious that the patent office of the new democratic government granted Suzuki a financial subsidy to continue research in motorcycle engineering, and so was born Suzuki Motor Corporation.

In 1953, The Diamond Free is introduced and features double-sprocket wheel mechanism and two-speed transmission. That year Suzuki scored the first of many racing victories when the tiny 60 cc "Diamond Free" won its class in the Mount Fuji Hill Climb.

By 1954, Suzuki had officially changed its name to Suzuki Motor Co., Ltd. S mark was adopted as corporate emblem in 1958.

In 1955 the Colleda COX debuts, a 125cc bike equipped with a steel frame. It features a 4-stroke OHV single-cylinder engine with three-speed transmission.

Using MZ’s technology (Ernst Degner defected to the west while racing for MZ in the Swedish Grand Prix, and he took knowledge of Walter Kaaden’s expansion chamber designs), Suzuki wins the newly created 50cc class in the World Championship. The company will win the class every year until ’67, and win the 125cc class twice in that period, too.

The T20 is released in 1965 (aka Super 6, X-6, Hustler). This two-stroke, street-going Twin is one of the fastest bikes in its class. The ‘6’ in its name(s) refers to its six-speed gearbox. The T500 ‘Titan’ (1968) is an air-cooled parallel-Twin two-stroke.

In 1971 the GT750 2-stroke surprises people with its three-cylinder liquid-cooled engine. In North America, it’s nicknamed the Water Buffalo; in the UK they call them Kettles. Also the TM400A motocrosser goes into production, a 396cc bike designed for 500cc motocross races.

With the GS750, Suzuki finally builds a 4-stroke, four-cylinder road bike in 1976.

The 779cc DR-BIG, dated by 1990, has the largest single-cylinder engine in living memory. The much-loved 16-valve, 1156cc air/oil-cooled Bandit 1200 appears on the scene in 1995.

In 1996 Suzuki calls the new GSX-R750 the ‘turning-point model’ thanks to its twin-spar frame instead of the older double-cradle frame. The engine is also redesigned and featured 3-piece crankcases, chrome-plated cylinders and a side-mount cam chain as well as Suzuki Ram Air Direct (SRAD) system.

Moto blog

Church of MO: 2001 Suzuki Bandit 1200S

In March, 2001, little did we know our pleasant little applecart was about to be rudely upset. That’s right, the www was gaining traction and MO was becoming a going concern. Six months later came the little matter of 911, which upended how we lived, or didn’t anymore, and set the world on fire – literally at first and figuratively later.

2022 Suzuki Hayabusa First Ride Review - Video

Isle of Man TT ace Mark Miller talks about the new 'Busa. Videos by Sean Matic Mark Miller is absolutely enamored with the new, 2022 Suzuki Hayabusa. Don’t believe me?

2021 MO Middleweight Naked Bike Shootout - Six Bikes!

Six motorcycles, one winner Credit: Photos by Evans Brasfield | Videos by Sean Matic We last performed this public service in 2017, when your Yamaha FZ-07 prevailed over the Kawasaki Z650, Suzuki SV650, the new Harley-Davidson Street Rod, and the new and indeterminate Benelli TnT 600, in that order. The FZ-07 has since morphed into the MT-07 amidst a host of well thought-out upgrades in 2018, and then again for 2021. The Z650 got a modern instrument pod in 2020 with a few other tasteful refinements, and the SV650 hasn’t changed a bit (God bless it).

2022 Suzuki Hayabusa Review - First Ride

The new Hayabusa is the same as it ever was: a land-based missile Credit: Photos by Kevin Wing With all of our staff editors busy working on the upcoming middleweight naked bike shootout, we found ourselves in a difficult position. Thankfully, we have Mark Miller in our quiver of freelancers. Who else but someone who has raced in some of the most challenging motorcycle races around the world could be trusted to crank the throttle of a Hayabusa wide open down the long front straight of the Utah Motorsports Campus?

2021 Middleweight Naked Spec Sheet Shootout

A by-the-numbers look at our six contenders With the Aprilia Tuono 660 and Triumph Trident 660, we’ve got two brand new middleweight nakeds on the market this year, entering what was already a pretty good field with the Honda CB650R, Kawasaki Z650, Suzuki SV650, and the Yamaha MT-07. Obviously, this calls for us to put all six motorcycles together in a shootout. John, Troy and Ryan have been putting these middleweight naked bikes to the test, with Evans taking photos and Sean shooting video in preparing this six-model comparo.

Church of MO: 2001 Suzuki DR-Z250

Did September 11, 2001, change the world? Seems like it did, beyond the destroyers of the World Trade Center’s wildest dreams. Before that, there was Minime and Calvin off for a ride on a spring day on a new Suzuki DR-Z250.

2022 Suzuki GSX-S1000 First Look

The new GSX-S1000 gets a facelift and Euro 5 updates The 2022 Suzuki GSX-S1000 has undergone a thorough restyling and is said to boast engine changes that deliver more broad range torque in the low- to mid-range where the GSX-S had been criticized in prior tests. These updates also bring the GSX-S up to Euro 5 standards. When we compared the last GSX to its predecessor, it had gained smoothness at the throttle but lost horsepower and torque in the process.

2022 Suzuki Hayabusa First Look

Everything you wanted to know about Suzuki's flagship except what it's like to ride For a segment of motorcycling as technologically-driven as sportbikes, 14 years is an eternity – even more so for a category that Suzuki calls the Ultimate Sportbike – but that’s how long it’s been for the Hayabusa. While there was an incremental update in 2013 that brought ABS to the table, until today, the Hayabusa, a motorcycle that, on its inception way back in 1999 had claimed the title of “world’s fastest production motorcycle,” had only undergone two generational updates: the original release and the 2008 revamp. However, today’s announcement of the 2022 Suzuki Hayabusa adds another chapter to this earth-bound missile.

Suzuki Teases New Hayabusa Reveal on Feb. 5

Suzuki is teasing a new model launch for Feb. 5, and all clues point towards it being for a new Hayabusa. The Hayabusa remained a part of Suzuki’s U.S.

Archive: Yoshimura Hayabusa X1R

Millennium Falcon For a couple of years there’ve been rumors suggesting there’s a new Hayabusa on the way, and with that old warhorse currently MIA from Suzuki’s list of returning 2021 models, the buzz has grown a bit louder that Suzuki’s fixing to spring a new World’s Fastest Production Motorcycle on the world. This time we’ll be a bit less unsuspecting than we were in 1999, and this time, it won’t be so easy a feat for Suzuki to pull off, given the existence of the Kawasaki H2 Carbon, which made an honest 206-rear-wheel horsepower on our dyno last November. Whether the new ’Busa is fact or fiction, it probably won’t be the earth-shattering experience the original 1999 GSX-R1300 was, a motorcycle that had no peer or precedent when it came to bouncing off its 186-mph speed governor.