New 'busa Breaks Cover

NEW 'BUSA BREAKS COVER

RAND MANAGERS STALK the halls of major enterprises, ensuring that

corporate and product identity are maintained. Suzuki is sportbikes! And greatest among them has been the flamboyant Hayabusa, whose name is velocity. Let nothing change this central truth!

Yet models must be

updated, even if they’ve sold 100,000 units since the ’Busa’s intro in 1999. The trick is to intensify identity, not let it slip away in Ducati 999 fashion. Make a big engine bigger! We think the already-robust 1299 now swells to 1325, or even 1340cc. That’s basic.

From Suzuki’s advance materials, obviously translated from the Japanese, we learn that the central concept of the restyled 2008 Hayabusa is that “the rider cannot be ignored as an element to compose aerodynamic characteristics.” I love the language.

Okay. Getting out my magic decoder ring, I flash on a scene of BIG motorcycles, lined up at Maxton, North Carolina, to show just how fast their mighty owners are down that former runway for rushing and roaring SAC jet bombers. I see interesting modifications-your actual grassroots innovation. Lowered tanks allow riders to drop the line of their backs, keeping smooth airflow attached longer. Smaller wakes mean bigger speed. Windscreens have been cut and reshaped to lead the air to this speed-boosting task more accurately.

By golly, some very similar work has been done on this new bike. Clay bucks have been shaped and screeded, and with rider aboard, have been breathed into truth in the wind tunnel. The rider can tuck in tighter and lower now, and the sides of the windscreen have been raised to the level of the shoulders, its center section

double-bubbled to fair into the he! met. Frontal area has increased slightly for rider comfort in the tuck, but the tunnel work has hammered the aero coefficient.

Result? CdA unchanged. Bottom line? Same aero but bigger engine? Performance up.

Current style requires the eye to jump in rapid saccade from interest to interest-scoops, nostrils, folded surfaces, colors. Anything else is text without pictures. There’s plenty of that jumpaction in the Hayabusa’s shape now, and the tunnel has made sure that its performance cost is zero.

Now the brand manager is smiling-that nose and tailsection remain unmistakable. Hayabusa.

Kevin Cameron

For more info on the 2008 Hayabusa, plus photo ialleries and videos, go to www.cycleworld.com.