Suzuki GSX-R: A Legacy of Performance

Suzuki’s GSX-R series is synonymous with performance and has become one of the most evocative marques in motorcycling. Its groundbreaking design established an entirely new category of race-replica motorcycles and forced competing manufacturers to respond to the GSX-R by adopting new technologies and often abandoning their own favored designs. To say the GSX-R forced the hand of sportbike makers everywhere is a dramatic understatement. Suzuki GSX-R: A Legacy of Performance explores the roots of the original GSX-R750 concept, its showroom and racetrack successes, and how its eye-opening performance, lightweight design, and charismatic personality established a new market segment that Suzuki continues to define. Each generation of the GSX-R family is explored through interviews with Suzuki engineers and designers. Virtually every member of the original GSX-R development staff is still associated with Suzuki, and they all offer recollections of the bike’s gestation, providing priceless insight on the breakneck-speed engineering required to bring a light, fast race bike to the street. Readers will be taken inside the off-limits Ryuyo R & D center and proving ground, where the engineering and development of the GSX-R models are carried out. This is followed by a virtual factory tour that shows a GSX-R being built step by step. Suzuki GSX-R: A Legacy of Performance offer’s an insider’s look at the most influential and winning marque in motorcycling, with hundreds of behind-the-scenes photographs, many of which have never before been published.

Marc Cook has been in motorcycle journalism for twenty-two years. His extensive background in aviation and automobiles gives him a thorough technical understanding seldom found among his fellow journalists. He is the co-author of Ducati 999: Birth of a Legend, with Alan Cathcart.