SHEENE AND THE SUZUKI RG500
“It was a frightening machine at the time. Along the mile-and-a-half main straight on the test track, the bike would stand up on its back wheel all of the time as it sailed over the gentle rises in fifth gear. Put it into sixth gear and it would rear up again and veer from side to side. It was a real beast that was almost impossible to ride in that state.”
Barry Sheene had travelled to Japan in early 1974 to be shown Suzuki’s latest prototype Grand Prix racer. It was a 497.7cc water-cooled, square-four, two-stroke with rotary-valve induction that would soon become known to the world as the RG500.
It wasn't a revolutionary machine; it was based on Suzuki’s 250cc RZ63 square-four of the mid-1960s, but it was powerful and, in 1974, power was everything, as Sheene’s former Suzuki team-mate, Steve Parrish explains: “In those days you weren’t looking for much else other than horsepower. As far as chassis stiffness was concerned, anything did the job, because you had no grip and no brakes. So all you needed from a chassis was something to hold the engine, forks and swingarm in place. Horsepower was everything.”
It was Barry’s first trip to Japan and to Suzuki’s Hamamatsu headquarters where the entire race department comprised just 30 people. “The greatest thrill of the visit was being allowed into Suzuki’s secret room where they had this 500-4 ready to be unleashed,” Sheene later recalled. “I was the first rider ever to be allowed to try it. I felt privileged. But after doing one lap of the test track, I had to stop and think about it because it was
