![katana motorcycle katana motorcycle](https://www.classicmotorcyclesales.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/DSC07358-min.jpg)
Well, the media was wrong, and Hunter was half-right. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. I’m almost convinced that Hunter S Thompson was looking at the same poster I was when he wrote: “One of God’s own prototypes. But no-one knew any better back then.Īlmost immediately, the world’s motorcycle media hated it. And by today’s standards they didn’t handle at all.
![katana motorcycle katana motorcycle](https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/gallery/2020-suzuki-katana-available-with-samurai-pack-in-the-uk-priced-from-gbp-11399_9.jpg)
The beast actually topped out at about 218.ĭid it handle? Sure, by 80s standards all sorts of things ‘handled’. It tipped the scales at 232 Kgs dry, howled down the quarter mile in 11.5 seconds and, as I discovered after drinking six beers and taking the keys from my mate, Frank, had an indicated top speed of 240km/h – which was a fully fledged speedometer lie. It grunted out 97Nm of torque and spewed forth 111 brake horsepower. Did this thing even exist and did it work? How could anything that looked like this possibly be serious? “What fresh and fabulous Hell is this?” I said to myself as I sticky-taped the image above my bed. The Katana debuted at the Intermot show at the end of 1980, and the first models were hitting showrooms in 1981, which is when that poster went up on my wall as my pants went into the laundry basket. They put what they’d developed inside a wind tunnel and at the end of the day, created the fastest and wildest-looking bike the world had yet seen.
![katana motorcycle katana motorcycle](https://cdp.azureedge.net/products-private/prod/89e639fa-f936-4c37-800f-08867967ebb0/5e761af5-3219-4861-8dcc-a827014b6326/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/45d99b1d-fbdc-4a98-ad67-aab90050e4b8/3100384d-6e5e-4357-b02b-ab19011b90e7/6000000002.jpg)
Still, when he got together with Jans Fellstrom and Hans-Georg Kasten, smashed a few beers and broke out the crayons, motorcycle design was never the same again. At first glance, Hans hardly possessed the kind of background that spoke of cutting-edge design. Its designer, Hans Muth, was the former chief-of-styling for BMW. I just bought a GSX100EX instead, and regretted it ever since. I was not a patient man then, and I am not one now. But the sales-animal told me I would have to wait a few months. It was iconic, ground-breaking and I came very close to buying one. She was on a Suzuki GSX1000S Katana – a bike which sat the motorcycle universe on its prissy white arse after punching it the face a few times.ĭesigned by steel-eyed Germans still coming to terms with placing a distant second in WW2, it was styled like nothing before it and lots of stuff after it. But this naked girl was sitting on the wickedest-looking motorcycle the world had ever seen, so she was somewhat less interesting to me than she would normally have been. It was 1980, and I had a poster of a naked girl on my wall.