The Suzuki Hayabusa broke cover in 1998 and shattered our perception of motorcycle performance at its 1999 introduction. Cycle World Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor Mark Hoyer discuss the Hayabusa’s impact after 25 years, and how other bikes relate, like the Kawasaki ZX-11, ZX-12, and ZX-14, plus Honda CBR1100XX. Hoyer talks about what the bike was like to ride at the press introduction held in Spain at MotoGP race track Circuit de Catalunya, and “On-Road Touring” at 190 mph on Spanish freeways. Plus, record-breaking performance in the quarter-mile and its 194-mph top speed recorded by the CW radar gun, and how that brought about the “gentleman’s agreement” to limit peak speeds of motorcycles. Kevin talks turbos and the surprising things Suzuki did during development of the Gen III ’Busa. Strap your helmet on an tuck in!
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Hi everyone, welcome to the CycleWorld podcast. I'm the editor-in-chief of
00:04 CycleWorld, Mark Hoyer, and I'm with someone you may have heard of, Kevin Cameron, our
00:08 technical editor, legend in the business. We're doing a weekly podcast on what
00:15 else but motorcycles. This week we are starting with the legend of the Hayabusa.
00:22 25 years of what I would argue is the most significant open class sport bike
00:30 ever made. What do you think, Kevin? I have no objection to that. I think that it
00:37 just took a position, and there are other motorcycles of roughly comparable
00:46 performance, but it seems that Hayabusa really clicked with people who wanted
00:54 that ultimate motorcycle. And in its time, the Vincent was an ultimate. In an
01:02 earlier time, the rough SS100. But Hayabusa is still with us. It didn't
01:10 have to die off in order to become a legend. Yeah, 25 years. You called it the
01:16 ultimate motorcycle, something like that? And that's what they said at the
01:22 press launch and on the launch of that motorcycle. So they launched it at Cologne,
01:25 and it just was mind-blowing. It was here's this like copper and gold thing
01:33 we call the cosmic suppository at the time because it was all real sort of
01:37 amorphous. Not amorphous, but it had all these kind of gooey contours, and it was
01:42 sort of organic and teardrop shape. Like well-used soap. Yeah, we learned,
01:49 you know, we learned to say like, "Oh, this is, we know what this is now. This is a
01:54 Hayabusa. This is the fastest motorcycle ever made." But on the launch, it was just
01:57 sort of shocking. And then they made all of these claims about how much power it
02:02 made and, you know, that it was ultimate sport that invented a new
02:08 category. And, you know, I went on the press launch in '99. It was at Circuit de
02:14 Catalunya, and we, you know, we all flew in. It was a huge launch as it would be
02:19 for a flagship motorcycle like this. And I just, I was thinking back to walking
02:24 out onto a MotoGP, a Grand Prix racecourse, walking down pit lane with
02:32 a row of like 25 idling Hayabusas making steam out the tailpipes. And
02:38 that we're gonna get on and click into gear and go. And, you know, as much as you
02:42 read about that, you don't, you know, I don't think you process how, you can't
02:48 process what the actual dynamics are gonna be like. And so when you get on
02:53 something that, you know, we dynoed at 160 horsepower later when we had a
02:58 test bike, we dynoed at 160 horsepower and essentially 100 pound-feet of torque.
03:05 You have no idea about the chassis dynamics. You have a suggestion because
03:09 you're at a Grand Prix track. You get on that bike and you click into gear and you
03:13 go out on the course and it was absolutely mind-blowing. It pulled
03:18 through fifth gear the way other bikes pulled through third. You know, you go,
03:25 you go ripping down at Catalonia, it's got that famous downhill and a sweeping
03:30 right-hander onto a very long straightaway. And I want to say we were
03:35 just tapping fifth gear at the end of that straightaway, which on that bike is
03:39 probably something like 185-ish, you know, and then hard on the brakes. And we did
03:44 that all day. We had minor brake fade, you know, the lever got spongy and then the
03:49 slipper assist clutch could be a little bit weird on launch. Like it would kind of
03:56 grab and release. No other issues. Like we just hammered it all day. Actually
04:01 this is the, let's see if we can get a focus there, but this is the invitation to the
04:08 Worldwide Test Ride that I got, my paper invitation when I was with Cycle News.
04:13 I was actually there with Don Kine. And then inside here, probably hard to
04:18 see if I can get in there, but it says, oh, there it is. Day two on-road touring, it
04:27 says on-road touring. So we did an entire day on a racetrack. We're intimately
04:31 familiar with the bike. We're completely blown away. And then we did on-road
04:37 touring, touring. And the guy, the German guy leading the ride says, you know,
04:41 please obey all the traffic laws. Germany was a huge market for Suzuki and they
04:45 kind of seemed to run the launch and they had organized the street ride. And he
04:49 said, yeah, please obey all the traffic laws. And then he just threw the clutch
04:52 and left the parking lot in a cloud of tire smoke. And I want to say in like
04:55 five minutes, we were tapped in sixth gear doing 185 on a public freeway, just
05:01 passing cars like they're standing still. And there was, yeah, there was like 20 of
05:06 us. And so in the tech presentation, you know, as we arrived, you usually have a
05:12 tech presentation and they tell you about the bike and that, you know, just as they
05:15 had said in Germany, they're reiterating it. It's, you know, it's the company line,
05:19 it's PR backhoe, whatever. And they say, we have invented a new category. That
05:27 category is ultimate sport. And you're like, you know, I mean, we've ridden lots
05:31 of bikes. You kind of lean back in your chair and like, okay, hyperbole, you know,
05:35 like you're exaggerating. -Drastically restyled taillights. -Yeah, you know, so. And then, you
05:42 know, we did this two day ride. I'm like, yeah, ultimate sport. Totally. You've done
05:45 it. And it really was a new category because the market that it entered was,
05:50 you know, ZX11 was a profoundly fast motorcycle. And, but it was, you know,
05:55 sort of more old school. It wasn't this new generation of thing. And I think we
06:00 got something like 174 top speed, 175 out of a ZX11. But it was very much a road
06:06 burner, a little bit more spindly suspension, stuff like that. But, you know,
06:10 cool bike. CBR 1100XX came out in 97 and that was sort of 177, 178 was the top speed.
06:20 Laudable, faster, but not like, not earth shattering. And it was a beautifully
06:25 civilized bike. Like it was a very, very much like a grand touring machine. Um, but
06:32 it wasn't brutal in the way that the Hayabusa was brutal and yet controlled.
06:37 And I think that's to me, like one of the essential elements of the Hayabusa was
06:42 the balance that it had. Cause we could ride it on a racetrack and we could do
06:48 all these things with it. We could ride it on a racetrack. You could sport tour
06:51 with it. It was big, it was comfortable. And it always had a combination of
06:57 incredible power, civility, handling, and comfort that other road burner type
07:04 bikes, open class sport bikes were always on one side or the other. The Honda was
07:09 like silkier and sort of longer feeling and smoother. It had two balance shafts,
07:16 you know, uh, they, you know, they, they, I mean, you know, Honda has that sort of
07:22 everything has ball bearings on it or it all has liquid centers I think is something
07:25 that Kevin.
07:26 Well it's supposed to be more of a gentlemanly brand.
07:28 Yeah. And so, yeah. And then like the ZX12 came out and that was sort of tall,
07:34 like a tall, hard sport bike. And then, you know, ZX14 came out and that was just
07:39 like a motorcycle that was begging to have its front end tied down and put a
07:43 stretch swing arm. Like they, it was fine. It was nice. It's a good sport bike. It
07:47 was fun to ride on a back road, but Hayabusa always encapsulated this whole
07:53 idea of, of like ultimate sport. And it really was, I don't, I don't know what
07:56 else to say. I mean, it really, um, I mean, it's in a lot of ways I wrote this
08:02 ones that changed my life. Like it was such a leap. We're used to last year plus
08:07 3% or last year plus 5%. And we got that bike and we got the test bike and we did
08:13 a nine 80 Don Kanae wrote a nine 86 at one 46 in the quarter mile on a completely
08:20 stock bike. And I picked that bike up as my longterm bike. When I got first hired
08:25 at cycle world, I wrote it 12 hours to attract a day. I wrote it all day, two
08:30 days at the racetrack, burned the sides of the tires and then wrote it back, did
08:34 12,000 miles. And at the end of that, handed it over to Don Kanae and he did a
08:40 nine 89 at one 48, 12,000 miles. And a year later, it was, it was as if nothing
08:47 had changed.
08:48 Cause I remember when dealers were saying, I don't know what it is about
08:52 clutches, but every year our brand makes the clutch bigger and our riders burn it
08:59 down quicker. So it's almost like backwards from what you'd expect. So this
09:04 is, that makes this quite impressive.
09:06 Yeah. So I think, you know, that part of it was amazing. And in 25 years, they've
09:12 stayed very true to it and they've evolved the bike. I think, you know, we
09:16 can talk about technical evolution from Suzuki and the aftermarket, but in fact,
09:20 I think you can't have, you know, with the Hayabusa, you don't have one without
09:25 the other.
09:25 Yeah.
09:28 Yeah.
09:28 I mean, you have the bike came out and, you know, it was ultimate sport. Did they
09:34 plan on drag racing? Did they plan on land speed? Did they plan on thousand
09:39 horsepower turbocharged Hayabusa? It's hard to say. We certainly know that by
09:44 third gen, they were designing for it. They had recognized the aftermarket
09:50 culture and, and responded to it by force induction during development of gen
09:59 three.
09:59 We asked them straight up, do you test with turbo charging? And they said, yes.
10:05 Yeah. What do you know about what they were doing to the engine at that time? Do
10:08 you have some specifics?
10:09 You mean the 300 mile an hour guys or Suzuki?
10:14 Well, I think, I think let's talk about, well, let's talk about the 300 mile an
10:19 hour guys.
10:20 Because the 300 mile an hour guys are very concerned about reliability, because
10:26 if you're at Maxton or one of those other strategic air command decommissioned
10:31 air bases, you've got a 12,000 foot runway, which is a lot less than you get
10:36 at Bonneville. So if anything goes wrong, you'd better have it gathered up pretty
10:42 quick.
10:43 And so in talking with those people, you know, the engine gets all new studs from
10:53 the specialist manufacturers and pistons and rods and crankshaft from, from Marine
11:00 crank and all these heavy duty things, because for their engines, the starting
11:08 point is a new Hayabusa, which at the time was $13,000. This was a generation
11:15 two. And the turbo kit, which was another $13,000, supposedly gets you 650
11:24 horsepower. Well, they weren't going to be satisfied with some milk SOP number
11:29 like 650. And so they went on from there. And the aftermarket has basically made
11:37 alternate parts, Honda used to call them countermeasure parts, that I like it,
11:44 everything that ever failed, you can buy made from vacuum remelted 4340 steel or
11:53 some other elevated substance. So those people just went through those engines
12:00 meticulously going after the problems that cropped up. And that is why the the
12:11 engine modifications that Suzuki talked about for generation three, read really
12:18 like the development of a race bike. They aren't. Well, we brought in the product
12:24 cheapening department because these items were too expensive. We wanted to cut 12
12:29 cents off, which is that's legitimate. That's what happens in industry. Our
12:35 products are lasting too long, etc. But this was basic durability improved
12:46 crankshaft oiling, particularly for the rod bearings, single diagonal drilling
12:52 from one crank pin to the adjacent crank pin at 180 degrees to it, and cross
12:58 drilling of the journal so that there's always one oil pickup in the clearance
13:04 zone where the oil pump is refilling the bearing. Because that's what happens as
13:09 engine revolves. The the open side of the bearing where the load is not is being
13:18 refilled with oil from the pump, right? And then it will be swept by viscosity
13:22 into the loaded zone for the next thump from combustion. And they they also
13:30 switch to rolled rather than cut female threads in the cases. And they in order
13:40 to make torquing the fasteners more accurate, they gave up on foot pounds on
13:48 torque measurement, and instead went to the run the fastener down until it makes
13:53 contact. And then we turn it so many degrees, they found that that was more
13:58 accurate and resulted in cases that could tolerate greater load. The rolled
14:03 threads are basically forged on the inside. This is female threads,
14:11 supposedly fatigue strength up up 23%.
14:16 Well, that's what we cherish on all our fasteners is that if you're really going
14:21 for it, you got to use rolled threads because the material is compressed and
14:24 resist cracking so much better. Yeah. And that's why we go to the aftermarket
14:29 stud manufacturers and fastener manufacturers. And then it's the
14:32 satisfaction of screwing those together and how smooth they are.
14:36 Ooh, I love that. Class 3 fit. It's like focusing a camera.
14:40 Spectacular. Yeah. So I love that feeling.
14:44 So yeah, I mean, that that's really what we're talking about here. You know,
14:49 they strengthen the cases, and they upgraded the oil system, upgraded the oil
14:55 system. And they, you know, they during their own testing for Gen 3, they used
15:00 force induction to kick the horsepower up to C is what we're doing effective.
15:06 And then I think one of the ultimate acknowledges acknowledgments of the
15:09 aftermarket is that they didn't move the intakes or the exhaust ports in Gen 3.
15:16 Because that would have been a torpedo into the aftermarket.
15:20 Yeah, tip of the hat to everybody who had designed something to slap on there
15:24 and stuff it with more and extract it or turbocharged it on the way out. All every
15:29 every jig and everything else was, you know, roughed in already like you, you
15:34 already knew the score. Think of how boiled you would be if you had your new
15:37 gear and you went to bolt it on the Gen 3 and it wouldn't fit. Just absolutely.
15:43 So another thing that they did with, uh, they turned, uh, compliance with Euro 5
15:53 into an advantage. And of course those business books that used to be stacked by
15:58 the checkouts at Staples. Um, this, this sounds very much like that. The idea that
16:05 every crisis is an opportunity. Euro 5 is a crisis. It requires that engines have
16:13 less valve overlap. And what Suzuki did in this case was when they shortened the,
16:20 uh, the valve timing to take out the overlap. The reason that overlap is
16:27 disadvantageous is that fresh charge can come in the inlet and go right out the
16:33 exhaust. So, uh, to prevent that you, you shorten up on your overlap timing, but
16:39 that reduces power. So what Suzuki did was they did what's done in, in MotoGP,
16:47 shorten the timing, shorten the timing and increase the lift. But in order to do
16:52 that, you're opening and closing the valve in a shorter time, which means you
16:57 are accelerating it harder. So now you need a stronger spring. The stronger
17:02 spring is going to have, require greater load. So they widened the cam lobes. So
17:08 there would be a bigger oil film to support all that action. And the result
17:14 of having a strengthened mid range that resulted from these Euro 5 modifications
17:20 was that the generation three bike accelerates harder than generation two
17:27 at the speeds, engine speeds and highway speeds where you actually ride.
17:35 Well, where we actually ride, where the street rider actually rides. And that
17:40 was, that is a cool, uh, that is a nice point. I, in a lot of ways, when the Gen
17:45 three was introduced, I sort of thought, well, that's, you know, it has more torque
17:49 in the mid range and it, and it does accelerate faster. And that's like,
17:54 that's like messing with the statistics or party in the engineering house to me a
17:58 little bit. Um, it is a fantastically impressive motorcycle. And because, um,
18:03 you know, I think, uh, we all have a little bit of the competitive monkey in
18:08 us. You just want that next, the next, the next Hayabusa to have more power. And of
18:13 course, if you need more, if you need to peak for whatever you're doing, it's
18:18 really easy to find. And the first thing, anybody who rides a high performance bike
18:22 knows that the last people you, whose attention you want are enforcement people.
18:28 Well, yes. So, and nothing, nothing attracts them like one, the word sport
18:34 and two, a tremendous horsepower claim. Well, and that's the great point you're
18:41 making here reminds everyone, me included, that the Hayabusa is the bike that brought
18:47 about the gentleman's agreement to limit top speed. And so it, it is the last bike
18:52 that was unlimited. We had 194 mile per hour, top speed measured by a radar gun.
18:58 I could go get it and see another room, 194. And then it was like, Oh gosh, we
19:03 better do something before they do something to us. And the top speed limit
19:09 was born. And we all have a speed limiters at 300 clicks, 180, whatever that
19:15 is. 185, 186. I know what a letdown, right? But then I always, I must remember
19:23 the late Don Tilley, uh, who built all those, uh, eight 83 Harleys for AMA's
19:30 road race class. Um, he said, I am young fellers love the big numbers, but I got
19:37 to tell you, we won a lot of races with horsepower averaged over the RPM range.
19:44 We actually use. Yeah. And that's what has been done with Hayabusa is that it
19:50 has not been boosted at the top, which would have been exciting to tell your
19:54 friends about at the bar, but it has been boosted where it's going to do you
20:00 really quite a lot of good in a kind of subtle way. Yeah, absolutely. If, if
20:07 you're ahead and you're holding the other guy's pink slip when the evening's
20:10 over, you're good. Yeah. I think we have, we have future topics. We have, uh, we
20:17 should talk about the Hess station, you know, classic Daytona days, Hess station,
20:20 drag racing. I went to some of those while I was in Daytona. And then what'd
20:26 you say about the average horsepower in the RPM range that we actually use? I
20:30 think these are topics like maybe, um, you know, I've heard it also expresses
20:34 area under the torque curve. Sure. That's a way to put it. Yeah. Um, and so
20:39 that's why, why I tell you, it was saying horsepower averaged over the
20:43 range, RPM range you actually use. So, yeah, let's put the, we'll, we'll put
20:48 that on the next topic list. But I think, um, I think what we have is a, a, an
20:57 industry defining motorcycle, a, a motorcycle that changed, I think the
21:01 soul of Suzuki. It was this really powerful corporate statement. It looked
21:06 like nothing else. And it really bloomed a, it changed our expectation about
21:12 motorcycling. It changed what we even thought was feasible, possible. Yeah.
21:16 And it did it in such a civilized way on the street. And then I was thinking of,
21:22 and then this explosive aftermarket and speed records and Maxton, this, we took
21:30 a turbocharged Hayabusa to L'amour Naval Air Station. A guy brought one out for
21:37 us for one of our stories, zero to one 80. And when he accelerated that away
21:43 off the line, it was, it challenged my perception because it was, we had been
21:48 watching fast bikes all day. We'd been watching leader bikes and ZX fourteens
21:52 and stock Hayabusa's and he took his turbo and he launched off the line and
21:57 it was like comically fast. It was disappearing. It just went and it was
22:03 gone. And I just, I just couldn't, couldn't believe it. Um, and that is
22:09 really why we think it is the most significant open class sport bike.
22:13 Yes. It, uh, created a new category and then it filled it. So there wasn't room
22:23 for a competitor. But of course, uh, Suzuki had already done the GSXRs and
22:31 they had developed and developed and developed the GSXRs. So this was, uh,
22:36 really a void that was waiting to be filled. Come Suzuki, have I got a deal
22:43 for you?
22:44 Yeah. And it's been, you know, it's just been a, a, a global, a global hit, a
22:50 global sensation.