Suzuki’s GSX-R750 is arguably one of the most important motorcycles to be built, ever, and many variants are rightly hailed as ‘classics’.
Not only did the GSX-R750 kick-start the fashion for the race-replica machine in the 1980s, it also launched a number of race careers and the likes of the streetfighter sub-genre. The original air-/oil-cooled 750F from 1985 looked like the XR41 endurance racer it was so clearly based on, so it was also obvious that the road bike would return to the track, in production and superbike racing. As it did so, it made names of the likes of Kevin Schwantz, Doug Polen, Trevor Nation, James Whitham and Phil ‘Mez’ Mellor to name but a few. And – on the road – if you crashed one and couldn’t afford the price of replacement bodywork (or wanted to tell the insurance company you’d dropped it) you simply left it off, put straight bars on it and wired up a pair of Cibies… Voila! A streetfighter…
The GSX-R750 would spawn many different capacity versions (in fact the 400 came first in 1984) but the 750 was seen as the cornerstone of the range. So much so that, even more than 20 years ago when sales of the 750 class were in rapid decline, Suzuki kept on developing them.
Regular readers of CMM would know that we’ve done the original 750F to death; we’ve also shone a light on the Slingshot and the SRAD but we’ve yet to move bang up to the VJMC’s 15-year deadline. This issue we do, to bring you a
