Third gear, mid-sweeper, dead stable, planted to the point of over confidence, and engine still pulling – these are the pertinent facts of the 2008 Suzuki B-King, a 181hp, 108 lb-ft of torque sci-fi cannonball to which I’m currently clinging. The biggest question? Do I upshift? Or back off?

Grunt. Shove. Push. Usable Power. Keep your horsepower high-output statistics, because what the new Suzuki Bandit 1250S has in spades is torque. A maximum 79 lb.ft of it achieved at a mere 3700rpm… read that again please then repeat after me, “Maximum torque at 3700RPM.” That means you have you choice of gears off the…

In Oliver, BC., at a local sportbike rally it’s incongruous that the motorcycle drawing the most attention is not amongst the flocks of GSX-Rs, fleets of CBRs and flights of R1s, it is a cruiser. Okay, it’s not that big of a shock – the 2007 Suzuki M109R LE, resplendent in a blue metal fleck…

In third gear I roll on the throttle of Suzuki’s 2007 GSX-R 1000. Within seconds my riding companions are reduced to pinpoint headlights in the rearviews by fearsome acceleration. This is not so much an engine as four inline “hell-mouths” on whose demonic intakes you sacrifice gouts of virginal 94-octane gasoline conjuring a howling outflow…

At 4500 RPM I whack the throttle of Suzuki’s new power cruiser offering, the M109R, and the result is a melodious baritone trumpet.  It’s the type of sound a dinosaur might make in its death throws before it got on with something useful like becoming petroleum.  Give the M109R’s voracious appetite for fuel that makes…

It’s the sound of plastic scraping hollowly across blacktop that scares the hell out of me.  Have I lost the bike?  No, it’s my knee-puck giving notice that the 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 750 is on duty and making me look better than I am.  Out of the corner of my eye I see photographer Kevin…

The 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 600’s engine howls like a horde of banshees in the throws of heat as we blow by the parked “unmarked” police cruiser.  I’m pushing my luck this third time past the same dark blue sedan.  The first two times I made a pretense of being legal, but both the cop and…

Last time we saw a visage such as this it was likely being chased by villagers brandishing pitchforks and torches.  Yes, the V-Strom 1000 is an ugly Frankenstein’s creation of components, but it’s powerful, surprisingly agile, and underneath its dubious styling is a valiant spirit capable of carrying you to the some of the more…

Kicked back in the chair of a Whistler coffee shop with its trademarked mermaid logo, she and I look on across the parking lot at the 2005 Suzuki Boulevard C90T.  The bike handily filling a majority of the parking stall, it stands out glaringly, and even now men stop to point and watch – you…

“Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.” – Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 – 1963) It’s clear now Suzuki could have saved a lot of weight on the 2005 GSX-R 1000.  At 203kp/h the bike is gently and repeatedly kissing the rev limiter; the intake howl and engine sound wondrous, like a…