Bikes

These Are Not the Eagerly Awaited Suzuki GSX-R250 & All-New GSX-R1000…But They Should Be

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These images are very likely not of the hopefully-soon-to-be-released Suzuki GSX-R250 & GSX-R1000 sport bikes, as their purveyor, Japanese magazine Young Machine, has a fairly horrible track record with these sort of things…but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore them.

After all, here we see two very attractive offerings, which we hope the folks at Hamamatsu will take a long look at, as the Suzuki GSX-R1000 rendered here would be an attractive update to a name that was once the superbike to beat.

The rendering exercise from Young Machine also shows that a quarter-liter sport bike from Suzuki should be directly related to its liter-bike brethren, not only to strike the aspirational nerve of riders, but also to justify the added expense and limited return on the company’s superbike offering.

Of course, we would expect to see the new Suzuki GSX-R1000 draw more inspiration from the Suzuki GSX-RR MotoGP race bike, which features an inline-four engine with a crossplane crankshaft. Suzuki’s return to MotoGP, after all, is supposedly tied together with a return of the GSX-R platform.

Like the MotoGP project though, we hear the street project is still under development. Some rumors and patent fillings suggest that the new GSX-R is to have variable valves, traction control, and 200hp on tap, all in time for the 2016 model year.

There’s one glitch with that rumor though: Suzuki, by far the most adversely affected Japanese manufacturer during the recent recession, is also said to be unable afford/justify the expensive of the tooling for low-volume models like the GSX-R line.

This means the company will have to invest wisely in its new model developments, likely prioritizing high-volume machines over low-volume machines. In the competitive superbike landscape, a model like the new GSX-R1000 is a very dangerous gamble for a company with limited funds and who is in a precarious financial position.

As we’re fond of saying, time will tell how all these rumors play out. Until then, we can rely on the creativity of others to fuel our speculative fires. Or, we can just keep on making stories up.

Source: Young Machine via IAMABIKER

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