Suzuki Katana turns 35

Suzuki created the GSX1100S Katana in 1980 – and motorcycle design was changed forever.

It’s right and proper to blame the Germans for this. Because it was the Germans who designed it. Suzuki hired the former chief of styling for BMW, Hans Muth, who got together with Jan Fellstrom, Hans-Georg Kasten, and a wind-tunnel in Italy, and built the world’s fastest and craziest-looking (for those times) production bike.

Suzuki debuted the Katana at Intermot in late 1980. The first production models began appearing in 1981 and I remember touching my 19-year-old man-parts like a monkey when I first saw one.

The whole blended tank and two-tone seat, pointy nose, weird pseudo-fairing and outrageous performance did everyone’s head in.

It produced 97Nm of torque and 111 brake horsepower. It weighed 232kg bone dry, did the quarter mile in 11.5 seconds and, if you were brave and drunk, it had a top speed of 218km/h. By today’s standards, it handled like a cranky bison.

The world’s motorcycle media, which was always more conservative than the Pope’s prayer meetings, were convinced it would fail. It was simply too outlandish. Too bizarre.

As usual, the motorcycle media was wrong. The Katana sold its brains out. There were more than enough lairy, shouty, crazies riding bikes who also wanted to ride this one. I wasn’t one of them, because I was too shy, but my mate Frank was.

In 1982, shit got even crazier. There was a 1000cc version built called the SZ which was eligible for racing under the international superbike rules, and then the Kiwis stuck their oars in the water and the legendary Southern Hemisphere wire-wheeled Katana was born — the E27 SZX.

Suzuki was selling its brains out in New Zealand owning 42 percent of the market. Graham Crosby was racing them and was world TT Formula One champion.

But Honda was coming up hard with its CB1100R. To combat the Honda, the Kiwis demanded, and got, an up-spec Katana. It got hot factory cams (probably made by Pops Yoshimura), round-slide oval-bore Mikuni carbs, better brakes with braided lines, large diameter mufflers and lightweight spoked rims with an 18-incher on the back for race tyres.

Only 20 E27 were ever imported into New Zealand. Another 25 were sent to South Africa for reasons no-one knows about, but probably apartheid — everything was about apartheid back then.

There were only ever 45 hot-shit Katanas made and Australia did not get any of them. Yes, we got Katanas with spokes, but the motors were bog stock. So everyone lied to everyone else about how theirs was a special South African or Kiwi Katana that would do 248km/h — and everyone was happy. And full of shit.

They stopped making them in the year 2000. The world was supposed to end then, so that was a good call. Along the way they made 750 versions and 650 versions and versions with pop-up headlights.

All of them were shit. But in 1981 the Suzuki Katana was one the greatest bike ever built.