It’s amazing to think that Suzuki’s mighty GSX-R1100 is 37 years old with this incarnation – the 1100L – almost 33 years old.
The thing is, a GSX-R of any capacity never seems to age and always looks good. Making its debut in 1986, the 1100G was based heavily on the previous year’s trendsetting GSX-R750F. So, it shared a similar-looking MR767 aluminium box-section ‘double-cradle’ frame, the ‘Full-Floater’ swingarm and a 1052cc motor which would be the first of the legendary powerplants that would be synonymous with power, tuneability and reliability.
Cooling would be – like the 750 – acombination of air/oil, but power was around 128bhp claimed at the crank at just under 10,000rpm. Weight would be 197 kilos dry, but this would creep up as the various models progressed, so that by 1988 the K-model weighed in at around 210
