Suzuki 1000 GSX-R 30eme anniversaire 2015 — Specifications

Thirty years. Sometimes you need to step back to measure what four letters can weigh in the history of an industry. GSX-R. In 1985, when the first 750 arrived with its hundred horsepower in an aluminum perimeter frame that weighed barely more than a racing bicycle, no one really knew that Suzuki was about to redraw the contours of the global Superbike. Competitors took years to understand what had happened.

To celebrate this anniversary, Hamamatsu dresses its current GSX-R 1000 in the colors of its ancestor. The gradient blue stripes, the graphic comma on the side, the stickers on the fork tubes: the nod is honest and immediately readable for those who know its history. We would have liked more. A two-tone seat, a two-tone tank, a small commemorative plaque engraved on the fork head would have transformed the exercise into a true collector's item. Suzuki stopped just short of the line. It’s a shame, because the base deserved a more generous treatment.

This base, just so, remains formidable. The inline four-cylinder engine with a displacement of 999 cm3, with its 74.5 mm bore for 57.3 mm stroke and a compression ratio of 12.9:1, develops 185 horsepower at 11,500 rpm and 116.7 Nm of torque at 10,000 rpm. All in a package that weighs 205 kg fully fueled, with a seat height of 810 mm. On paper, the power-to-weight ratio rivals that of a R1 or a CBR1000RR of the same era. On the road, the aluminum perimeter frame and the 45 mm inverted fork maintain a chassis-engine coherence that has always been the signature of the range.

The twenty lucky buyers who will get their hands on this limited series will leave with a Yoshimura R11 stainless steel exhaust that radically changes the machine's sound signature, a double-bubble screen for better protection at high speed, a racing stand and a cover. ABS is standard, which is the least one can expect at €14,899. The Brembo braking system, with its two 310 mm discs with radial four-piston calipers at the front, does the job without discussion. The GSX-R 1000 30th Anniversary is not a motorcycle for the undecided or for novices. It is a pure sportbike, designed for the track and for those who already know what they are doing on a machine that can exceed 300 km/h.

The balance sheet is in the image of the motorcycle: effective, a little stingy in visual emotions compared to what we hoped for, but solid in its fundamentals. Suzuki has paid homage to its past without betraying its present. That’s already a lot.