Spinning beneath me was a liquid-cooled, DOHC, 999cc Up to, with upright seating that didn’t put too much weight on my wrists nor too Despite the cold, dampĬonditions and riding on the left side of the road, the Katana was easy to warm Road that snakes its way through the mountains, which Suzuki reserved to provideĪ traffic-free opportunity to test the Katana. Northwest of Kyoto is the Arashiyama-Takao Parkway, a private toll Suzuki hosted a global launch for the Katana in Kyoto, theįormer imperial capital of Japan renown for its thousands of temples and Closed for the day, it provided a real-world yet traffic-free testing environment. Arashiyama-Takao Parkway is a private toll road in the mountains northwest of Kyoto, Japan. To suspension damping rates, new instrumentation and new LED lighting. ![]() Was shifted rearward and the handlebar was moved up and closer to the rider.Ĭhanges to the underlying GSX-S1000 platform were limited to a minor revision Steering angle and allow more space for the rider, overall weight distribution To develop the concept into a production-ready motorcycle, and visually thereĪre few differences between the two. (Pricing has not yetīeen announced.) According to Chief Engineer Satoru Terada, it took 14 months Katana will be available later this year as a 2020 model. Unveiled at the 2018 Intermot show in Cologne, the new Built on the solid, street-tuned GSX-S1000 sportbike platform, the Katana delivers a high degree of usable performance. Frascoli’s Katana 3.0 Concept was presented at the Milan show in 2017, and, as it did nearly four decades prior, Suzuki indicated its approval by green-lighting a new Katana for production. Elements carried over from the original Katana include the rectangular headlight, the “sword cut” across the tank and silver bodywork. Commissioned by Italy’s “Motociclismo” magazine, Frascoli collaborated with engineer Alberto Strazzari to graft modern, Katana-inspired styling onto the existing Suzuki GSX-S1000 naked sportbike.įrascoli’s modern interpretation of the Katana is more compact and has more aggressive bodywork, but it retains the pointy fairing with rectangular headlight, the “sword cut” across the tank and the silver color.įrascoli was not attempting to create a retro motorcycle, but rather a contemporary interpretation of the original, with more aggressive bodywork, a smaller tail section and other changes to reduce visual mass. Like the original, the latest incarnation of the Katana comes from the imagination of an independent designer, an Italian named Rodolfo Frascoli whose portfolio includes Moto Guzzi’s Griso, Norge and Stelvio and Triumph’s Speed Triple and Tiger 1050. The lower part of the original Katana’s tank looks as though it has been cut by a sword, and the concept’s logo–still in use today–is a stylized combination of the Japanese characters for “katana” and “edge.” Target Design came up with the Katana logo, which is a stylized combination of the Japanese characters for “katana” and “edge.” It’s still used on the 2020 Katana. ![]() They also felt that motorcycle design should flow with the grace and fluidity of swordsmanship, which is why the bike looks cohesive rather than an assembly of separate parts, as nearly all motorcycles had been up to that point. When developing the original concept, Muth’s team studied Japanese culture and saw similarities between a sword and a motorcycle–both are tools as well as symbols, and both must be treated with respect. It also paved the way for the GSX-R750, the first fully faired “race bike with lights” put into production, which was launched for 1985 and helped create an entirely new segment of the market.Įssential to the legend of the Katana is its name, which refers to the type of sword used by samurai warriors. Thanks to its futuristic styling, as well as its claim as the fastest production motorcycle of the time, the Katana was a sales success and helped catapult Suzuki into the modern era, much as the R90S did for BMW. The original Muth-designed 1981 Suzuki GSX1100S Katana, on display at Suzuki’s museum in Hamamatsu, Japan.Īlthough the Katana drew mixed reactions, Suzuki was duly impressed and rushed the new model into production with few changes. Based on earlier design studies, they developed a concept that wrapped the existing GS1100 in bold, futuristic bodywork and unveiled it at the Cologne show in 1980. A commission from Suzuki to develop a new, provocative design language for its motorcycles motivated Muth and two other designers–Hans-Georg Kasten and Jan Fellstrom–to leave BMW and start their own firm, Target Design. The R90S was an internal BMW project pushed through by then-executive VP Bob Lutz, who credits the bike for saving the company’s motorcycle division from insolvency.
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