Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127806
L-S----'H:....-OW~ยท--'--_ _ .'11996 IFMA Cologne Motorcycle Show coupled with 320mm floating front discs underline the performance intentions of the new Suzuki V-twin, which weighs 411 pounds dry in the half-faired TLlOOOS form it's been launched in. Asking Suzuki executives at Cologne when we can expect to see a fully faired RR version of the bike, complete with optional performance kit, prod uced the enigmatic response, "Wait till Paris." As in the opening of the Paris show in ~p tember, 1997. With only 8,000 bikes projected for the first year's production, the TLlOOOS shows every sign of being an instant sellout - especially at the ultracompetitive price level announced in the United States of just $8,999. The second part of Suzuki's IFMA double whammy was provided by the debut of the widely touted GSXR600, a small-scale version of the 750 introduced last year, and the company's first serious effort at a 600cc supersport class contender. Closely modeled in both technical and styling terms on its big brother, but a new model in its own right rather than merely a destroked 750, the 66.5 x 44.5mm in-line four (compared to 72 x 46mm for the GSXR750) once again breaks new ground by featuring an aluminum twin-spar chassis in By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyoichi Nakamura \0 0\ 0\ rl ~ !-< '0; .g ..... u o 10 COLOGNE, GERMANY, ocr. 2-6 ineteen ninety-seven will be the Year of the Twin, judging by the array of new models unveiled at the 1996lFMA Show. From Bimota to Suzuki, Honda to Laverda, exciting and in some cases'radical new designs for twin-cylinder motorcycles filled the stands and grabbed the attention. For the second year in succession, it was Suzuki that stole the show, with an array of new models highlighting the company's stated ambition to become brand leaders in each major category of street bike sales. Tough talk from one of the smaller members of the Japanese commercial colossus, but backed up with the' right product at the right priceone reason for Suzuki's continued overall dominance of the German bike market, Europe's largest. . After the debut of the new GSX-R750 in Paris last year, this time it was its GSX-R600 kid sister and the fabulous new, fuel-injected TLlOOOS sport twin which took the limelight in Cologne, each of them self-evidently the result of Suzuki's engineering staff taking a clean sheet of paper and starting from scratch to deliver the ultimate no-compromises design in the chosen class. Thus the only thing Suzuki's new Vtwin TLlOOOS shares with the desmo Ducati it will inevitably be compared with is the common 90-degree cylinder angle. Everything else is different, and radically so, at that. Here is the long-awaited first Japanese sport bike with an integrated engine management system incorporating both electronic fuel injection and digital ignition (which is separate from the EFI on the RC45 Honda), bristling with innovation in both design and styling. (Above and right) Suzuki stole the show with its pair of aces, the TL1 000 fuel-injected twin and the all-new 383-pound-dry GSXR600. The 98 x 66mm cylinder dimensions allow big 40mm inlet/33mm exhaust valves in the four-valve heads, driven by twin overhead camshafts per cylinder but with the bulk of the heads reduced in size by a clever idea first seen on the Rumi Supermono road racer a couple of years ago, which ~ntails chain drive to an idler gear beneath the cams, both of which are in turn driven oUit.. A narrow 29-degree included valve angle, high 11.2:1 compression ratio, downdraft inlets with ram-air induction, staggered shafts on the six-speed gearbox to reduce engine length, cylinders rota ted rearward on the crankcase compared to a Ducati, to likewise minimize length and improve weight distribution, a slipper clutch previously found only on Ducati race bikes, and fully mapped two-stage EFl with a single injector per cylinder are all aspects of a design intended to set the benchmark for its class, and which delivers a claimed 125 bhp at 8,500 rpm - presumably at the crank. Bu.t that's not all. Suzuki obviously has taken a close look at Over's family of limited edition, hand-built oval-tube aluminum spaceframes and decided to mass produce a similar design for its own new twin - but with the added feature of a rotary dam per with remote spring for the rear suspension, again in the interests of shortening the wheelbase to a compact 55.7 inches. Yamaha's engineers also have been working on a similar system, based on the same principle as its Ohlins subsidiary's rotary steering damper, but Suzuki has beaten them to the punch. Fully adjustable 43mm upside-down forks and a hefty six-inch rear wheel, the 600 Su pers.port class for the first time from a Japanese manufacturer, helping slash dry weight to an amazing claimed 382.8 pounds - just 4.4 pounds over the FlM minimum weight limit for Supersport 600 racing: take the lights off, and you need to add ballast not to cheat. And though Suzuki carefully refrained from announcing any power output at IFMA - remember this was Germany, where there's a 100-bhp horsepower limit - the company did the next best thing and revealed the new 600 has 3.5 pounds for each horsepower. Do your math and that makes a classleading 108 bhp at 12,000 rpm, thanks to a 12:1 compression ratio and 26.5mm inlet/22mm exhaust valves, with 36.5mm semi-flatslide Mikuni CV carbs and ram air induction. Just as on the 750, the smaller engine