1985 SUZUKI GSX-R750 SUPERSTOCK
RACER TEST
Thirty years later, we revisit the
Suzuki GSX-R750 — one of the
most significant production street
bikes ever produced
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAY GROAT
I
t's hard to think of any new
model as immediately dominant
straight out of the box as the
Suzuki GSX-R750 was in its debut
1985 season. Nothing demonstrat-
ed this better than its supremacy in
that year's inaugural MCN Super-
stock British Championship—the
first ever series run anywhere in
the world to carry the Superstock
name—where the new GSX-R750
dominated, winning nine of the 11
races. Veteran star Mick Grant,
then 41, won the first four rounds
in succession. Grant would go on
to convincingly wrap up the title
with five victories in the end on
the bike entered by UK importers
Heron Suzuki, and sponsored by
adult magazine Men Only. Each
of the races in the series offered
nail-bitingly close racing between
topline riders on evenly-matched
machinery that the average spec-
tator could readily identify with–the
whole rationale of the Superstock
category, and today's Superbikes.
Dipping in and out of each other's
slipstreams, sitting it out three
abreast under braking for chicanes
or hairpins, swapping the lead half
a dozen times a lap, these Super-
headbangers of all generations
on their Superstockers revitalized
a UK racing scene that was then
flagging because of the economic
downturn. Sound familiar?
The key ingredient of a series
enthusiastically supported by
three out of the four Japanese
manufacturers, was that it pitched
sporting streetbikes like those
lined up in the circuit bike parks
against each other with a minimum
of tuning. As such, it represented
the British counterpart of the
AMA Superbike category, which
was christened as such by the
man who invented the streetbike-
derived class in the USA in 1973,
British expat Bruce Cox. He'd
returned home to the UK in 1982
to run the no-holds Yamaha
RD350LC ProAm series, then
dreamt up and promoted the
Superstock category.
"I wanted to bring our Superbike
concept to Britain, but without
the expense of tuning the engine,
which by then had started to
fragment the AMA field between
the importer-backed teams and
STOCKER SUPREME
Alan Cathcart
takes a spin on
the same Suzuki
GSX-R750 that
he tested 30
years ago.
P62
