How Suzuki became the Walmart of Motorcycle Companies

Suzuki wasn't always the Walmart of motorcycle companies now you may already find yourself offended especially if you're a bit of a Suzuki fan but before you click off know that I don't really mean that as an insult Walmart is great it's affordable usually its products are pretty good quality for what you pay um sometimes there's a Subway in Walmart which is good I guess I think what I mean is that Suzuki today is sort of the ultimate value motorcycle brand now there are budget Brands like Royal Enfield for example Suzuki isn't that it's not a budget brand it's a sort of True Value brand if you want an all-around great sport bike dirt bike adventure bike but especially sport bike Suzuki has great options that are really affordable they're not going to be the absolute best in their class but if you want something that will do the job and probably won't break down but also isn't gonna really turn any heads or be known for having like The Cutting Edge technology Suzuki is the brand for you they simply aren't known for really anything at this point they're not at The Cutting Edge of performance or technology or design they come out with all new models at about half the rate of every other Motorcycle company but if you want a decent solid motorcycle and you don't want to spend too much you should probably get a Suzuki but here's the thing this was not always the case with Suzuki as a company their identity as a brand has undergone a massive shift over the past 20 years and that's what I want to talk about in this video every Japanese Motorcycle company that was not Honda faced a sort of uphill battle to make a name for themselves especially going into the 1960s and also into the 70s Suzuki knew how to innovate and reinvent themselves when needed from their switch out of loom building to building their first motorized vehicle which was called the power three not only the first true moped in many people's eyes it also had an Innovative form of what we could almost call pedal assist so it had three options you could pedal it you could pedal it with power or you could just run on the power now after the power 3 came out there was the Kalida this was Suzuki's first true motorcycle which they would quickly take racing in 1959 and it's here that Suzuki's identity as a company focused on sporting motorcycles would become very clear though most of the kalitas entered into the mount Osama volcano race failed to cross the finish line one of the bikes LED for a single lap 1960 would mark an increase in CC's for the Kalida from 125 to 250 and the first production model also to feature combination brakes at this time Suzuki was really trying to innovate and do new different things for the motorcycling world but Suzuki needed to prove themselves on the racetrack the 60s would Mark Suzuki's First Rise to Greatness due to their powerful two-stroke dominance among the smaller classes in Grand Prix racing especially that 50cc class their means of success however is another story that I've covered in an entire video video as they essentially stole Walter Cotton's technology from MZ to massively increase power in their two-stroke engines with the necessary blueprint for making power in two-stroke race engines Suzuki would slowly build up a dominant race program throughout the 1960s competing with Honda's high revving four strokes at pretty much every turn starting with this new 50cc class in 1962 and the Isle of Man and then including the 125cc class in 63 but through the 60s the company would never find their way up to the dominance in the larger classes on the production side of things 62 also marked the first year of Suzuki bringing the Kalida to the United States but 1965 would Mark a change in focus on the production side as Suzuki released the T20 a motorcycle made for the U.S market this was the first production motorcycle to feature a six-speed gearbox and if you know anything about 50cc racing you know that a lot of it was about having more and more gears in the gearbox by the end of the 1960s Suzuki's two-stroke prowess was obvious as they had doubled the cc's in their production two-stroke sport bike to 500 cc's the largest two-stroke at this time that you could buy it was unruly and Powerful but also loud and smelly now 1976 is the year where things really started to take off for Suzuki as a company with the production of their first ever four-stroke engine the gs750 this bike would be the predecessor to the iconic GSXR 750 the gs750 was incredibly Innovative especially when you think about the fact that Suzuki had only made two strokes until now many companies have just gone under with major changes in engine development in motorcycling from you know two-stroke to four strokes from air-cooled to liquid cooled from you know twins to four cylinders many companies have gone under because of these kinds of changes but Suzuki dug in and showed their Ingenuity by making an up-to-date Innovative four-stroke rivaling the best of what the other Japanese companies had to offer finally Suzuki would beat everyone to the punch when it came to an inline 4 sport bike of this caliber with the iconic GSXR 750 with the X standing for experimental and the R4 racing this bike was truly born on the racetrack many point to the Yamaha R1 or a Honda CBR or even the CB750 from 1969 as sort of the foundation for modern sport bikes but for many it's this bike the Gixxer 750. in my opinion no other bike has influenced this type of motorcycling this sort of race bike for the street like the GSXR 750 did one year before its International release a motorcycle simply known as the GSXR was already being thrashed around Japanese race tracks they were testing a new kind of motorcycle with the double-edged formula of an aluminum frame and a full Fairing and this motorcycle would set the standard for sport bikes up until today technology has changed over the past 40 years for sure but the idea hasn't really the idea of having less weight and more power and more aerodynamics that is the formula that Suzuki created with the Gixxer 750 and I think we often forget what it takes to design and develop a truly Innovative motorcycle like the GSXR 750. this isn't just a motorcycle that used a few new materials I'm talking about the best people in this business looking 10 20 50 years into the future and correctly predicting where the market is going and getting on the Forefront of whatever that vision is and then the company trusting those Minds with lots and lots of money and lots of time to make sort of the motorcycle of the future that's what happened with the GSXR 750 and with this goal of more power and less weight the 750 weighed more than 100 pounds less than the bike that it replaced essentially overnight the entire industry was turned on its head by this bike much like the CB750 did in its day and during the year of its release the GSXR 750 would take the victory in the 24-hour Le Mans endurance race and go on to prove itself as a true race bike at every level this motorcycle was better than the competition with Race Tech brought to the street in a completely new way not just in terms of this new lightweight aluminum frame but also the wheels you know magnesium engine components full race Fairing and it was a pretty affordable motorcycle it sort of became an attainable dream bike for Riders across the globe going forward Suzuki would continue to develop this platform taking part in the ongoing CC and power race with the iconic jigsaw 1000 also the Gixxer 1100 but also developing small high revving inline fours like the GSXR 250. the 1980s and 90s would Mark the Heyday for Suzuki's dominance and Innovation the company would never quite reach the Pinnacle of racing success like Honda did though it should be noted MotoGP is not the only promotion Suzuki has dominated other racing class classes as well but the GSXR line would sort of take on a life of its own this would become a different kind of Icon a race bike for the Everyman something attainable whether you were a young Rider wanting to take a stab at racing or a businessman who wanted a bike that could be ridden to the track and then on the track and then ridden back home and also a line of motorcycles that could be easily customized and built on that's what the Gixxer was all about a sort of race bike for everyone going into the 1990s Suzuki furthered this formula of less weight and more power with the GSXR 600 another class leading sport bike it was lighter quicker revier and ultimately even more track oriented than the 750. in the 1990s the two other bikes that stand out from Suzuki are of course the GSXR 1000 though that came a little later and the Hayabusa with the Gixxer 1000 sort of marking the Pinnacle of Suzuki Race Bike Tech and also setting the standard for What leader bikes would become over the next 20 years and and then also the Hayabusa with the epitome of power and speed in a straight line these are thoroughly audacious motorcycles and the effects of these machines still ripples through today in its day the Gixxer 1000 was the absolute Pinnacle of sport bike riding unbelievably powerful lightweight and scary fast for the road making 160 horsepower upon its release in 2001 but still then even with all of that being competitively priced and of course the Hayabusa needs no introduction this is the motorcycle that forced the gentleman's agreement among the Japanese to basically chill out and stop making more and more powerful bikes for fear that the governments would jump in and start regulating them now I think we look at bikes like the Gixxer 750 and 600 and 1000 and then you know the big inline for Hayabusa and we assume that these are just bikes built all on the same platform the way that bikes are developed today and that they're not all new models like they're just kind of tuned and bored Out versions of each other and that could not be further from the truth the the GSXR 1000 was truly an all-new model the Hayabusa was an all-new model and Suzuki was willing to invest years of r d and loads of money knowing that the payoff wouldn't sometimes come for years after the bike was out and that's what it takes to make a splash in an industry like the motorcycle industry and they knew that on top of that their willingness to make these ridiculously high performance motorcycles the kinds of bikes that some don't even think should be legal on the street and making them so accessible sometimes to New Riders even that's the epitome of motorcycling audacity that makes it so dangerous but also it's what we love about it starting with the original Gixxer 750 Suzuki made a name for themselves as a company committed to Raw performance available for everyone a kind of motorcycle that was attainable Suzuki like Kawasaki made bikes that your mom didn't want you to own but something happened along the way sure people still buy Suzuki's and people still even buy Suzuki sport bikes and jigsaw Bros still exist but the motorcycling world has changed so much since the 90s and the early 2000s virtually every major manufacturer has been forced to really diversify their lineup greatly as sport bike sales have just continually diminished and as some argue sport bikes are pretty much dying and specifically sport bikes for the street you know people buy track bikes but sport bikes for the street that that was the very bread and butter of Suzuki's identity and it's the very class that is disappearing now I don't want to oversimplify Suzuki's history though I have to to some level they have all sorts of other motorcycles and they've made all sorts of other great bikes including dirt bikes and Adventure bikes and you know they made the katana can't forget about that thing but the problem is as we'll see none of these models are standout bikes in today's market they're just not so the problem for Suzuki as a Motorcycle company today is somewhat complex first Suzuki is not primarily a motorcycle company worldwide two wheeled Vehicles make up a minute percentage of their revenue so the notion that Suzuki as a company as a whole is dying is just entirely false actual worldwide sales are up for Suzuki despite their struggles here in the U.S but that doesn't change the fact that Suzuki as they've been known is changing the specific ways Suzuki has grown and built a name for themselves especially in the west just isn't relevant anymore the motorcycling world has changed drastically over the past 20 years sport bike riders are leaving their sport bikes this class has been in Decline for well over a decade now nobody cares about new sport bikes they take years and millions of dollars to develop just to eke a few more horsepower out over the competition and being on The Cutting Edge of sport bike development is not only nearly impossible it's just becoming rather pointless building an all-new middleweight adventure bike on the other hand that's way more profitable for a company to put it simply the t7 is a bike that Suzuki should have made and could have made not Yamaha and as a sort of bookends to the whole story as the company begins to limit their model lineup and kill off some of those iconic models it was also recently announced that Suzuki would be pulling out of Moto GP altogether despite taking the title just a few seasons back as we've watched a sort of death of the sport bike these performance focused companies have taken different routes to survive even Ducati arguably the absolute king of high-end sport bikes today they figured out how to navigate this successfully whether it's focusing on touring or adventure bike options to making powerful fun naked and super naked bikes I mean look at the meteoric rise of KTM making what I would consider pretty compelling sport bikes for today's market motorcycles that sure aren't fully fared so maybe they're not sport bikes in some people's mind and they don't rev to the moon and they're not inline fours but they make lots of fun low-end power they Wheely for days and they're cool and they're pretty affordable and in that sense KTM has sort of replaced Suzuki but just making you know sort of every man's sport bikes for today's market unfortunately Suzuki has not figured out how to lead in any of these classes today which has left them with the lineup of old dated models using yesterday's technology on motorcycle platforms that have changed very little in the past two decades their leading models are cheap but that's because the r d was paid for on these models a very long time ago so it's not that they're bad options just like it's not a bad decision to go into Walmart and buy what you need to buy it's just not very exciting but I do believe that there could be hope for Suzuki when you look at Suzuki's history you get a sense that remaking themselves is a major part of their identity this is a company that knows how to assess the market and make the difficult steps necessary to get ahead Kawasaki successfully took the money that was sort of being wasted in racing to build compelling motorcycles that Riders wanted and much like Suzuki Kawasaki is also a massive company that just sort of does motorcycles for fun and that really shows in the development of motorcycles like the H2 and personally I think that would be a great route for Suzuki to just sort of forget making all the generic stuff and start making really crazy motorcycles again regardless Suzuki needs to get back to the Forefront of something in the motorcycle world if they're gonna survive whether it's retro bikes or middleweight or hyper nakeds maybe some kind of new motorcycle I don't know they need to make a GSXR 750 again a motorcycle that captures the public and really shows their chops and as vehicles in general become more automatic and honestly more electric just making generic motorcycles is not going to cut it it's going to be those specific special kinds of motorcycles the kind of bikes that are emotive those are going to be the bikes that stand out and that's what we've seen with Ducati and KTM and other companies generic value bikes are just not the future well those are my thoughts I'd love to hear what you guys think maybe you've ridden Suzuki's your whole life and followed their history and maybe you have some more insight on all of this I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments below make sure to like the video and subscribe for more motorcycle videos like this one and ride safe

Channel: bart

Views: 210,460

Keywords: bart, motorcycle, motorcycles, vintage, retro, triumph, top 10, top, best, worst, moto, bike, motorbike, classic, suzuki, how suzuki became the walmart of motorcycle companies, suzuki motorcycles, suzuki gsxr750, gsxr750, gsxr, gsxr1000, sportbike, racebike, motogp, literbike, litrebike, fast, fastest, craziest, engine, suzuki history

Id: 6Tju1OcFC2U

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023