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marque.com.au
Well, it’s a little difficult to convey just how significant a lot of motorcycle magazines consider the IBOTY, the International Bike of the Year award. One reason they think it’s so important is the fact that it’s the magazines themselves who supply the judges. ‘The most prestigious motorcycling accolade in the world, IBOTY is voted on by an international panel of judges from countries including Greece, Australia, UK, Germany, Taiwan, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Italy, USA, and Russia,’ says Suzuki Australia. Theoretically, IBOTY’s criteria include a contender’s ‘performance, engineering innovation, quality and affordability’, but in fact it tends to be the first of these that overshadows the others simply because that’s what the magazines are interested in. The Australian judge comes from Australian Motorcycle News, a magazine focused on performance. I don’t mean to take anything away from the honour of winning – and this is Suzuki’s seventh win in the ten years the award has been in existence – but it pays to know the background if you want to understand the significance. Which is that the GSX-R1000 delivers performance, in spades. But that’s not all it delivers. Forgive me for a moment as I wax lyrical, but it also provides something that means almost as much to me as power does to the IBOTY judges, and that’s sound. The GSX-R’s bellow from its triangular titanium Yoshimura exhaust is pure unadulterated music. I’d give it an award for that alone. That’s considerably more important to me than power output. The problem with the kind of power a bike like the GSX-R makes is that very few riders can use it effectively. I can’t, and an increase of 10 per cent or whatever it might be will be meaningless to me because I’m only using up to fifty or sixty – or whatever – per cent of the power the bike offers anyway. Don’t get me wrong, this bike is not just a powerhouse. It is also, like so many high-performance motorcycles these days, both reasonably comfortable and tractable on the road. That power comes on smoothly (throttle response is brilliant) and quite early. That makes the bike easy to ride even in traffic, although first gear does seem quite high – a bit of clutch slip every now and then fixes that. Once you have a bit more room to play with, the GSX-R1000 will basically go as fast as you want to go, and will get you there as fast as you’d like to get there, too. Don’t get carried away with the throttle, because unless your name is Shawn Giles the Gixxer has more power than you can use. This bike is the lightest and strongest open-class sportsbike ever produced by Suzuki. It’s no surprise that the machine is popular in Australia. ‘The demand for this motorcycle has been phenomenal and with the new colour options, particularly a matt black version, Suzuki Australia expects the new 2006-model to be even more popular’, says Glyn Griffiths, Suzuki Australia’s National Marketing Manager – Motorcycles. So yes, there is a black one as well as a silver one, although purists will insist on the ‘company’ colour scheme of blue and white. There is probably no sensible reason for buying a bike with the awesome power and potential of a Suzuki GSX-R1000, but it’s a long time since buying a motorcycle has had anything to do with being sensible. IBOTY or no IBOTY, I’m sure the new Gixxer will find many close and personal friends…
AT A GLANCE
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