Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
Civilized
By Kent Taylor
It is 1973, and there is still some fun left in this world. Crank up “Frankenstein” on the Pioneer stereo in your Firebird Trans Am, AMC Javelin or Ford Mustang Mach I, still a year away from becoming the emasculated pedestrian known as the Mustang II. Yes, 1973 is where the action is, baby!
Motorcycles in 1973 are still pretty groovy, too, with two-stroke street bikes ring-a-dinging around town. Cool bikes like the 1973 Suzuki GT 550, which Cycle News tested in the January 16, 1973, issue. According to CN, it was “a very civilized motorcycle.”
Say “huh?” Weren’t two-stroke street bikes supposed to be bad boys, makin’ noise, causin’ trouble and smokin’ in the boys’ room (and everywhere else)? What kind of a rebel wants a “civilized motorcycle?”
Changes were afoot in the world, and it wasn’t just in the automobile business, where emissions controls and something called “the five-mph bumper” were turning muscle cars into 98-pound weaklings with sensitive feelings. As Cycle News would write in a later issue that same year, “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.”
Which doesn’t mean that this crew didn’t like this particular Suzuki, which they heralded for its “fantastically smooth engine. No vibration, no dead spots when accelerating out and no surges. The first reaction of those who rode it, even around the block, was inevitably ‘it sure is smooth.’” The staff went on to write that it had “a neat feeling of controllable power.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But 550cc isn’t a small bike, then or now, yet the GT “would barely turn an honest 100 mph and anything above 85 you had to reach for.” Three years earlier, Kawasaki’s 500 Mach III reportedly hit 120 mph and could reel off 12.4-second quarter-mile times.
So maybe it wasn’t bad-boy quick, but the GT 550 had plenty of “pleasantness.” This motorcycle was as polite as Eddie Haskell, and the staff handed out nice compliments like Mrs. Cleaver handed out chocolate chip cookies. “Everything on it works and everything an increasingly demanding bike-buying public has come to expect is on it.” For 1973, that meant things like an electric starter, easy-to-read instrumentation and a front disc brake, which was effective, but noisy when hot (“it squeaked like a castrated mouse,” wrote CN). The clutch feel was light; no hydraulics needed. Shifting was as smooth as warm pudding.
The Suzuki GT 550 handled well, even with its wet weight of nearly 500 pounds. It had some wobbles, but in 1973 that was common on many motorcycles, and while it may have wobbled, it didn’t fall down. “It didn’t get out of hand or feel particularly scary, so you just wobble through the high-speed corners. The staff added in the usual gripe about the motorcycle’s lack of ground clearance, stating that “there wasn’t hardly any of it…chief offenders seemed to be the centerstand, the inside pair of the four split pipes, and the pegs. It was kind of unnerving to find out how quickly all metal would ground in the corners.” After years of whining about centerstands, manufacturers dropped them as standard equipment on most machines. The next time you need to adjust your chain, pause to wish any surviving magazine staffers a robust evening of irritable bowel syndrome. And yes, this three-cylinder machine had four exhausts.
For $1265, CN called the Suzuki GT 550 a “bike whose time has come. The cc displacement race has got to end soon before reaching totally insane proportions and the big bikes can be very expensive not only to buy but to keep running. On a little scooter, you’re nothing more than a moving target on the highway.” Civilized and pleasant, this middleweight machine was the right bike at the right time. The Mustang II of motorcycles.CN
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