Rotary Engine Motorcycle? 1975 Suzuki RE5 - Jay Leno's Garage

try not to form an opinion until you ride one and then you go oh my god that's what everybody's talking about but it's very addictive it is so smooth welcome to that episode of jayla's garage today one of the most loved hated smoothest running reviled coolest looking i hate the way it looks motorcycles this suzuki re5 this was a game change always going to be a game changer they had such high hopes for this you know the wankel engine was the big thing in the 70s dr felix wenkel developed this after world war ii i would say he was a great engineer which he was but he was also a nazi i mean a real nazi not one of those guys i'm just following all those nazis i mean one of those it was my best friend nazis so it's it's hard to have any kind of feelings for the guy but that being said he was an interesting engineer and the wankel engine general motors bought the patent for it uh well mazda certainly they're the ones that ran with it and made it made it run but everybody did everybody wanted to have a wankel because it looked like the future because with a piston engine you know you're changing direction every millisecond the piston goes down comes back coming down comes back of course this causes vibration with the wanker all the parts are moving in the same direction if you don't know what a wankel looks like or how let me show you what we have here kind of show you how a wankel works for lack of a better word let's say this is your cylinder and this is your piston now you know in the internal combustion the piston as i said goes up and down with this the piston turns constantly in just one direction it does not change directions so consequently it's incredible incredibly smooth this is essentially your combustion chamber right here your spark plug goes right in there and what happened was as this turns bang it goes around and the exhaust gases exit out the side so you don't have a lot of moving parts but although i'm not turning it very smoothly you sort of get the idea well let me show you let me show you how smooth this engine is that down a second watch the mirror now see if you can tell me when the engine starts don't even notice any vibration at all [Music] [Applause] that's 7000 rpm and that's the genius of the wankel engine just incredibly smooth this is the equivalency of 500 cc's that's the way they sort of i guess they judge it by combustion area or whatever uh and it's interesting but motorcyclists are pretty conservative people you know when harley came out with the knucklehead in 36 they only built a few of them because they were afraid he was too high-tech people liked the flat head they liked the three speed the spike came along overhead valves four speed this thing is a little too high tech you know you know how porsche keeps building the 911 and hardly keeps making a v twin that's kind of the same we that's the way motorcyclists are triumphs still look like triumphs and when you buy a modern triumph motorcycle the fuel injection system looks like ammo carburetors from the 60s because that's what motorcycles look like and this in no way shape or form look like a traditional motorcycle engine that being said suzuki really threw everything at this all their technical guys they worked night and day on on this project and when it was released it got great reviews it was incredibly smooth people thought it handled really well as a really a good handling bike and all the road testers liked it they said that's the future of motorcycles you know this kind of smooth riding you could go you know san francisco to new york city blah blah blah and just didn't catch on there are a lot of teething problems with it uh with the emissions of the 70s they tended to run they had to run extra lean because these it sounds like a two-stroke and it sort of polluted like a two-stroke and they tended to use a quarter oil every three four hundred miles something like that gas mileage was not good 25 to 30 which was really bad for a motorcycle it wasn't an out and out fast bike top speed was about 110 112 not that most people went that fast but you know bikers it didn't have a lot of the street cred as they say had twin discs in front even had a kickstarter which is unusual but a kickstarting wankle which is kind of funny because bikes a lot of bikes still had kickstarters in 75. they brought in giugiaro the famous italian stylist to do the design this sort of rocket ship look when you turn the key see what happens here watch the dashboard it just has that sort of buck rogers meets ming kind of look to it here as i said hydraulic disc brakes you had a drum in the back the handling was it was actually good they thought it was one of the best handling bikes of the 70s it was not lightweight but it wasn't a heavyweight either wankel engines tend to be a lot lighter the shock setup looks a bit strange but that's the way they had to have it almost up and down like that because any other way that i can't remember what it was the torque or something although these are not high torque hinges i don't remember the exact reason for that um yeah and they released the bike and bikers just thought it was too strange remember this is the 70s you start a lot of bikers that were world war ii veterans and consequently an american bike was better than a japanese bike because you know they fought them in the war and the japanese still had a reputation in the early days by the 70s it was disappearing but it still existed that uh japanese products were not particularly well made honda quickly changed that of course but it was still a transition period so when this came out people just thought what what you know it wasn't a torque monster like a harley or somebody could dump the clutch and do burnouts and wheelies it was just an incredibly smooth wonderful riding motorcycle that handled pretty good and that's exactly what it did but when people heard it was the equivalent of 500 cc's for what was it 2400 2500 which was hardly money or you know big bike money uh it didn't make a lot of sense to people consequently this bike almost bankrupted suzuki it almost put them out of business luckily they had the 750 water buffalo and some of the other bikes to kind of get them through an x6 hustler and all that stuff they're a very innovative company very smart company when i got this one i've had this got a long time i didn't buy it new but as you can see it's just about new it's all original paint these mufflers were interesting notice you have an air intake at the front of the muffler you see this here because wankels runs so hot they produce so much heat the japanese were so frightened that americans would sue because a passenger might burn their legs so you had this heat guard right here combined with a double wall muffler the the air would come in the front and cool the pipe and go out the back it was pretty innovative interesting not the best looking setup but it was okay it was tolerable so there's just a lot of problems like that plus they ran incredibly lean when i got this one it ran hot all the time we had to pull the carburetor lean it out do some modifications until we finally got it right and i must say it makes a great classic bite because a people have no idea what it is i mean i meet bikers all the time and go what else what is a what a wanker who built it is that experimental no no it was a bike that came out with it you know no it didn't go very well in fact suzuki uh does not even have one in their museum from what i understand because i think they were just embarrassed by the huge failure of it and i'm told all the spare parts of these were just put in a dump truck and dumped in the ocean somewhere off the coast of japan because make a reef or something because they just they were just stunned at how poorly it was accepted which was a shame because it was innovative it was different you know like the chrysler airflow like the harley knucklehead it's hard to sell something before it's time you know people just weren't ready for this uh i think with the also you know what else killed this the gas crisis of the 70s even though gas went from 28 cents a gallon to a dollar a gallon oh my god it feels the end of the world the fact is only got 25 miles per gallon not even as good as a volkswagen people said well why would i want that an engine i never heard of from a maker i'm not familiar with it gets terrible gas mileage you know for new technology to succeed it can be equal it's got to be better on all fronts it's got to be more efficient it's got to be faster it's got to be smooth it's got to do all of those and this this did one of those very well just incredibly smooth wonderful to ride but gas mileage was not good it was quirky most suzuki dealers could not fix it in fact a lot of dealers would sell it to you and go uh you're on your own okay there's no warranty here don't bring it don't bring it back because we don't know how to fix it because you needed an re5 guy to come fix it i mean it would be like having buying your ford gt down at mel's ford downtown where they just sell focuses and vans and you know whatever fusions and they don't know we don't know how to fix the 4g and that's basically the case so consequently in some ways it was his own worst enemy they only made it for one year now i know people got to say no they made made it in 76. now the 76s were just left over 75s they couldn't sell they took off the gigero speedometer here with okay the bobby rain gun thing no that didn't work get rid of that they took that off just cleaned it up made it look as much like a normal motorcycle as they could much way uh chrysler did with the airflow the 34 airflow had the front end with the waterfall grill it looked like a streamlined train people what is that okay sorry and they put a regular front end on it and that's what they did with this they got rid of this these kind of look like the uh the uh quote piston if you will of a rotary you know it has all those design elements to it uh i mean look at the three holes here and this this mirrors the speedometer in the front and these look like some sort of uh the day the earth stood still moving you know like something aliens would have some sort of pod it's just a it's just a crazy looking motorcycle and but i love it uh it runs smooth it runs cool you've got this radiator here of course the radiator is probably bigger than it well not bigger than it needed to be but bigger than they wanted i think because these did tend to run hot so you needed a lot of space there you had the electric fans and this just scared a lot of but you know don't forget in 75 bikes were pretty simple you bought a triumph you kicked it twice and it started thank you you know uh sure you had to decode the head every five thousand miles or something but that's okay that's okay it was easy to understand and people know how to work nobody knew how to work on these in fact when i got it what's that guy's name tim johnson he was very helpful um he was extremely he was one of the suzuki re5 guys and you know it is funny when you meet guys that collect this kind of stuff you go to the house and that's all they have is suzuki re5 parts you know the wife left years ago the kids don't talk to them the sinks are used as carburetor cleanup parts bins you know and they just they just live for their bike whatever it is well it's a harley knuckle what this is where's the triumph they're just funny but anyway take a look around as you can see kind of a cool looking bike something a little different again you've got different oils you got to carry engine oil you got to carry gas you got to have some injector oil here i mean this just it was just more trouble than people thought it was worth not me i love it i think it's great i just like anything different or unusual you know norton built a rotary and that was pretty cool but that didn't go anywhere either the only one that made the rotaries work were mazda and what mazda did was as i mean the real trick to these is this seal okay this seal right here at the end of the tip where that comes around when that wears you lose compression and what mazda did was at least the way i'm told you know that one of these apocryphal tales one of the engineers was sitting there one day and bouncing his pencil you notice how soft the lead was on the pencil and he thought hey maybe that would work as the seal and that's again one of those sort of simplistic tails but that's kind of what they did and mazda made a great motor out of it i love the mazda rotaries but even those eventually had to give up because they didn't get as good of mileage it said in the handbook please at least check the oil every other fill up people that's too much work to check the every other filler oh my god i couldn't possibly do that so that was a big turn off for people you know most people like to buy a car drive for two years never check the oil never change your arlen turn it in you know like on a lease or something i work with somebody at nbc that did that and one day the car just stopped and i checked the dipstick and there was nothing on it it just just ran out of oil and she just never checked it just okay people don't like maintenance and these were a little more self-indulgent whatever okay but different unusual but great fun to ride come on let's take a ride now i'll show you what it's like these are pretty cold blood it takes a long time to warm them up but it's very addictive it is so smooth well you see why the motorcycle testers raved about this bike well you can't see it but i see it it's just so incredibly turban like smooth it's uncanny if you ever get a chance to ride one of these you should because as i said before you know i found these bikes either 50 or 100 miles or half a million miles people either bought it as a collector's at them and just put it away or they just drove the hell out of them until they literally wore out because it's such a great long distance bike oh good the light changed come on let's ride some more remember this is the only the equivalency of a 500cc bike but it has all kinds of power those mirrors are just crystal clear not one vibration and i got to give kudos to harley davidsons with his jacket you know i got my other motorcycle jacket i've had for 25 actually no 40 years just the fact it still fits me it's amazing but this thing is really warm it's a cold day here in los angeles cold for l.a you know in the 50s and this thing is just fantastic the ray gun styling of this thing is really what makes an engine you either love it or you hate it but it's so damn neat and it just wants to rev revelation ah so smooth it doesn't get buzzy at high rpm that's why you have to constantly watch the attack on this thing because the next thing you know you're pinning that tachometer i always find the people that hate this bike most are the ones that never rode one there were other motorcycles in the pier that had a wankel engine the hercules for one but that was air cooled that was like a simpler more industrial engine it wasn't as sophisticated and complex as this thing with water cooling and and all kinds of stuff on it i mean that was kind of slow it was a nice commuter bike but this thing you you could go cross-country on it no problem and a lot of people did i mean the guys that are into these really love them you just don't expect you to be so turban like when you go from a bsa gold star which is like driving a bass drum to one of these oh my god it's night and day as i said earlier somewhere off the coast of japan all the spare parts for this thing are in the middle of the ocean somewhere which is a shame you just find yourself bearing down on people because you realize you're always going 20 miles an hour faster than you thought you were just because of the sheer smoothness and it's funny it's got a kickstarter on it that that's what kills me and there's is there a more 70s color than this you know if you're still watching this video you probably already made up your mind either love this fight or you hate it all i ask is try not to form an opinion until you ride one and then you go oh my god that's what everybody's talking about i mean the magazines everybody predicted this would be a huge hit and of course it turned out to be a tremendous failure which was sad it almost put suzuki out of business but we covered all that already anyway ride one if you can and uh i'll see you guys next week thanks again i'm gonna smooth out here [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 375,596

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Suzuki, rotary, motorcycles, RE5, wankel engine, motonerd, ride, riders, Japanese, Giorgetto Giugiaro, roadster, bikes, bike, biker, bikelife, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 1975 Suzuki RE5, Rotary Engine Motorcycle, suzuki re5, smooth rotary engine, 6 cylinder motorcycle, suzuki re5 jay leno, suzuki re5 restoration, 6 cylinder motorcycle sound

Id: 1sAdlTbUoJ0

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DarkestPassenger]

I hope Jay Leno's collection turns into a museum or something. The man is a down to earth scholar of anything vehicle related.

[u/VerticalNOR]

My dad owns one, just with a more brown/gold paintjob. Such a oddball of a bike, gets lots of attention at meets.

A unique one for sure EDIT: Here it is :) https://imgur.com/a/IrkLBEO

[u/vzaliva]

I would love to see dyno plots for this bike.