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Sissy Successor
By Kent Taylor
It was called “the original pistol” and “a 250cc weapon.” Cycle News staffers praised it as a “flyweight fire breather, a machine bred with performance taking precedence over anything…no 350 could match it, and even 500s lived in fear. It was the X-6 Hustler, Suzuki’s proof that there was indeed a substitute for cubic inches.”
In the late 1960s, the Hustler X-6 250 must’ve been something of a rebel, at least in comparison to the offering of the mellower machines of the time. Think original punk rocker, like The Velvet Underground. Wind it up and wheelie it high—wring it out as if you are somehow living out, in four dimensions, the distorted and frenzied ending of “White Light/White Heat,” piano, pistons and guitar playing different melodies, yet somehow all playing the same song. In the 1960s, really loud still wasn’t loud enough.
But Cycle News wasn’t testing the 1966 X-6 Hustler in its February 27, 1973, issue. This story was about its successor, the GT 250, a bike that appeared to bear as much resemblance to the original Hustler as Lou Reed shares with Yanni.
The title page “Gosh If Mom Could See Me Now” should’ve been a whack-in-the-back-of-the-head foreshadowing element. The X-6 name was borrowed from an experimental, nuclear-powered jet, while the Hustler moniker was original (preceding the Larry Flynt skin magazine by eight years), and it fit the spunky little two-stroke twin nicely. But by 1973, Suzuki had decided, perhaps arbitrarily, that the motorcycle-buying public neither wanted nor needed a flyweight fire-breathing 250cc two-stroke, leaving the CN staff bitterly disappointed. “Compared to its progenitor,” they wrote, “the GT-250 is a sissy. No tire-smoking, wheel-standing, hairy-chested antics for this kid.”
The new version of the Hustler was made more docile through several steps, one of which was quite literally starvation. The new carburetors on the bike may have been 26mm on paper, but they were made much smaller in the real world. How so? Longer carb slides were now fitted to the units, so that, “in other words,” wrote CN “the throttle doesn’t open all the way. The 26-millimeter Mikunis are effectively made about 20mm Mikunis and the engine performance goes away.” The 8000-rpm tach redline is something of a white lie, as the staff noted that the Suzuki won’t pull above 6800 rpm. “The engine has a governor and doesn’t put out the ponies that lurk inside.”
With its wild days behind it, the Suzuki had also put on a little extra weight, 20 pounds to be exact. “It isn’t that much,” wrote CN, “but combined with the loss of horsepower, it has a way of making itself felt.”
Once the comparison to the past subsided and the test crew stopped whining about what the Suzuki wasn’t, they refocused their lens on the bike as it was today (1973). The GT 250 always started on one kick. Thanks to Suzuki’s Posi-Force lubrication system, it used very little oil, which “puts the oil where it does the most good.” Handling and brakes were all that and more and the suspension was “a proper match of comfort and control.” It steered well, and bumps in the road were soaked up nicely. “The drawback to the good handling,” they wrote, “is that you wished you had more power.” The fuel tank was a “healthy” 3.9 gallons, and the GT-250 would ring ding for nearly 140 miles before needing a fill-up.
The emasculation of the sportive motorcycle seemed to be a trend in the early to mid-’70s. “Everybody’s doing it,” CN wrote. “Suddenly, performance doesn’t really matter, and most of the bikes coming out of Japan are down on performance and up in pleasantness. Suzuki has gone farther in this direction than most anybody.”
Testing the GT 250, while waxing nostalgic about the old X-6 Hustler, was much like reacquainting with an old flame. They come back into our lives less fiery, a little heavier, not as fast, and sporting a wider seat. The GT would probably be a better partner now than it would have been in its earlier days. It was a good machine and a pretty good value at $810. It was proof that, to find happiness, one doesn’t always have to walk on the wild side. CN
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