Big brother

Suzuki’s original GSX-R1100 was launched more than two decades ago and for many riders the factory’s subsequent versions all went downhill.
John Nutting is among them.

Many think that Honda’s Fireblade sports bike launched in the early 1990s was the first time the Japanese had used the hot-rod approach to bike design, fitting a potent 900cc four-cylinder engine into a lightweight chassis from a 600. But Suzuki had done it almost a decade earlier when the first of its GSX-R series was revealed at the end of 1984. Superbikes had been turning into lardy beasts with machines like the Kawasaki GPZ1000R and Honda’s VF1000R tipping the scales at more than 600 pounds (273kg) wet. Yamaha’s FJ1100 at 501 pounds (227kg) dry was regarded as light for the class.

Suzuki’s bikes had been suffering from the obesity trend as well with its top-of-the-range GSX1150 weighing in at 522 pounds (237kg) dry. It would take more than a diet to deal with the problem. Suzuki showed its wild card at the end of 1984: the GSX-R750, a bike that weighed not much more than 400cc machines of the day, yet packed 150mph performance from a completely new style of four-cylinder engine.

It was a combination that turned performance assumptions of the day on their head. By using an aluminium-alloy frame of the type that had been first tried with the RG250 two-stroke twin and the Japan-only GSX-R400 a year earlier and pruned internal components in the engine, the GSX-R750 weighed in at a featherweight 388 pounds.

Yet its novel oil-and-air-cooled four-cylinder 16-valve engine pumped out 100bhp, providing an unmatched weight-to-power ratio of 3.88lb/bhp.

Compared to the brutish broadswords of the day, this was a flighty foil, capable of darting through corners at its rider’s bidding where the bigger bikes called for caution. Designed with experience of endurance racing, for the first time this was a Japanese production bike with racing at its heart but with the addition of road-going necessities.

If anything it was perhaps a bit too highly strung, but the fact that it would wriggle its tail when powered out of corners only added to the GSX-R750’s feeling of being slightly on the edge.

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