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Power games
Suzuki has just released a more feisty Hayabusa, to challenge the Kawasaki ZZ-R1400. When will the power race end? GUIDO hopes it won’t…
The discussion was at the Golden Age pub, in Melbourne, close to the offices of The Age newspaper. It was the preferred watering hole for Age staff and Australian Motorcycle News (then owned by the same company).
Our post-production fortnightly lunch became known as the Foster’s Six-Hour (after the Castrol Six-Hour production bike race), and this was where we were speculating on how mad the whole horsepower race was becoming.
It was the mid 1980s. By then, we were seeing manufacturers boasting horsepower figures in the mid-120s, pushing 130-plus, and anyone who had ridden a GSX1100EF in anger knew that things were getting downright insane. It would pull 11-second quarters, wheelspin in any gear up to third if you gave it a chance, and was terrifyingly fast. When, someone asked, was this insanity going to stop?
Most of us were enthusiastic, if sometimes scared, horsepower hounds. So we weren’t condemning pushing the performance envelope – happy to see it happen. But, even after beer three, you couldn’t help wondering if some of this stuff was getting out of control. And downright dangerous.
Move on 20-plus years and we’re witnessing Suzuki releasing a second-generation GSX1300R Hayabusa, with a claimed near-200 horses so it can catch up with and maybe overtake Kawasaki’s mighty ZZ-R1400. The strip times have gone south – now in the nine-second bracket for a quarter. And the top speeds have moved up from a real 230 to a speed-limited 298, thanks to EC rules.
Are they more dangerous? Hell no. Compared to a GSX1100EF, either of the modern toys is a model of civility and user-friendliness.
A GSX1100EF at full noise was not a bike to be messed with – mechanically brutish and generally angry, it told you emphatically mid-corner that your life hung by a thread of good luck and a modicum of skill. If you stuffed up the entry into that next corner, you would be punished. Make it out the other side and you thought you were a player. Wrongly – you were simply a survivor.
Take Hannibal the (now old-gen) Hayabusa for a run. It’s different. In most situations, such as a wrist-crushing mid-corner pothole at speed, I know we’ll be fine and simply need to keep paying attention. The underlying chassis is better, though like on many of its predecessors the brakes are muddy.
A couple of things have changed in 20-plus years, other than horsepower:
1. The science and experience of chassis design is stronger and more trustworthy, so you don’t get anything like the frame flex of the eighties (though it still happens in a minor way) and the handling is more predictable;
2. Our riding ‘minds’ have been forced to move on with the new kit, so the idea of coping with 200 horses or 250-300 km/h has become part of the territory – the mental goal posts have shifted.
It doesn’t make us better riders – as my recent encounters with Winston the 1947 Sunbeam S7 have proven. I’m still clumsy with that bike, though there are and were people who could ride him as smoothly as I can any modern toy. For me, it is far more challenging to ride than any modern monster.
The new Hayabusa will hold no terrors, despite the up-spec performance chart. It will be more of the same and have sharper brakes.
So where does it all end? Not for a long way, yet. I, for one, wouldn’t mind having a breeding pair of Hayabusas in the shed, and see just how far we can push the envelope…
You’re always welcome to get in touch (and send counsellors) via the palatial MT offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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