We are still a few weeks away from the Tokyo Motor Show, which begins on November 22nd, but that hasn’t stopped Suzuki from teasing a couple of its concept models ahead of time. First up, we have the Suzuki Recursion concept, a striking half-faired street bike.
Featuring a new 588cc water-cooled two-cylinder engine, the Recursion at first glance doesn’t seem like much, but what we really think is going to get your motor purring is the machine’s intercooled turbocharging system.
With only minor modification, most new liter-bikes have no trouble reaching 200 mph, provided that you have a track long enough in front of you (don’t be an idiot and try to go that fast on the street). However, it is north of 200 mph where things start to get difficult. As we saw with the untimely passing of Bill Warner, reaching the 300 mph mark on a motorcycle is a serious matter, and it doesn’t take much for things to go horribly wrong.
It goes without saying then that Triumph and Jason DiSalvo’s attempt at 400 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats is a serious endeavor. Piloting the carbon/kevlar clad the Hot Rod Conspiracy/Carpenter Racing Castrol Rocket, DiSalvo will have two turbocharged Triumph Rocket III engines, good for a combined 1,000+ hp and 500 lbs•ft of torque when burning methanol, hurling him down the land speed record course on two wheels.
The self-proclaimed most advanced streamliner on the salt, the Castrol Rocket was built not only to break the outright AMA & FIM motorcycle land speed records of 376.156 mph (set in 2010 by Rocky Robinson on the Ack Attack streamliner), but the team also wants to go all the way past the 400 mph barrier. It’s a huge undertaking, and also a breathlessly beautiful machine. Check it out after the jump.
Carbon monocoque frame, turbo-boosted v-twin motor, single-sided swingarm, duolever front suspension geometry, and premium components — that’s what French firm Boxer Design’s SuperBob is made of. You’ll either love or hate the SuperBob’s general aesthetic, but you have to admit up close, the details of the sport-naked are superb. Based around an 88° 997cc v-twin motor that was developed by French firm Technologies (the same company behind the stillborn Inmotec MotoGP project’s motor), the Boxer Design SuperBob massages its peak power output to 158hp, thanks to some light turbo work (6-9 psi).
Racing his 1,299cc turbo Hayabusa to 311.945 mph, Bill Warner (you may have heard of him) became the first man to break the 300 mph barrier while sitting on a motorcycle. Eeeking close to 312 mph, Warner set the speed at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, which has a 2.5 mile concrete runway that serves as the LSR course. With 1.5 miles to hit a top speed, the Loring Timing Association certified Warner’s run, though it would appear that a follow-up pass in the opposite direction was not undertaken, meaning that the speed is not an official FIM land speed record. Don’t let that fact leave you unimpressed though, few riders see a true 200 mph, let alone 300 mph in any direction.
Big CC Racing, a British tuning company has unleashed the fury on a 2007 Suzuki GSX-R1000 with a kit of their own design that boosts the bike’s power to anywhere between 250hp to 450hp. The result? Wheelies in any gear. With no apparent adjustments to the bike’s geometry, we don’t know why they even bothered keeping the front-wheel on the bike at this point, because all the rider is going to be seeing is the sky with that wheeling lofting in front of him.