1987 Suzuki GSX-R1100: When Superbikes Got Serious

There are motorcycles that are remembered because they were beautiful.

Others because they were rare.

And then there are motorcycles that changed what everyone expected a fast bike to be.

The early Suzuki GSX-R belongs in that last group.

When Suzuki released the GSX-R750 in 1985, the idea was pretty simple: take what they had learned from endurance racing and put as much of it as possible into a motorcycle people could actually buy.

Light weight.

An aluminium frame.

Full race-inspired bodywork.

Oil cooling.

Four cylinders.

And very little that didn’t need to be there.

Then Suzuki did something wonderfully excessive.

They put a much bigger engine in it.

The GSX-R1100 arrived in 1986 as the big brother to the 750, and by 1987 the formula was well established.

A 1052cc, four-cylinder, 16-valve engine sitting inside a remarkably light aluminium chassis, wrapped in bodywork that looked like it had escaped from an endurance race.

Suzuki quoted the original GSX-R1100 at 130 PS and just 197 kg dry. Those were serious numbers for the mid-1980s.

The superbike had grown up.

And perhaps become slightly unhinged in the process.

First Came the 750

To understand the 1100, you really have to understand what Suzuki was trying to do with the GSX-R in the first place.

The GSX-R750 wasn't designed as another comfortable Japanese four-cylinder road bike with some sporty bits attached.

Suzuki openly described it as a machine drawing on its endurance-racing experience.

Its aluminium frame weighed just 8.1 kilograms, less than half the weight of the conventional steel frame Suzuki compared it with, and the complete bike came in at only 179 kg dry.

That philosophy mattered.

For years manufacturers had been finding ways to make motorcycles more powerful.

Suzuki was asking another question.

What can we take away?

Less frame.

Less cooling hardware.

Less weight.

More of what mattered.

It is an idea that sounds obvious now because modern sports bikes are built around it.

In 1985, it was fairly radical.

Then the following year Suzuki took that philosophy and gave it considerably more muscle.

Same Idea. Bigger Hammer.

The 750 was closely connected to racing.

The 1100 felt like someone had taken the same engineering philosophy and asked what would happen if you built the ultimate road version.

The answer was torque.

Lots of it.

The 1052cc engine didn't need to be screaming at the top of the rev range to remind you what you were sitting on.

This was a big-bore inline four in a light motorcycle.

Open the throttle and there was no computer deciding how much of your request was sensible.

No ride mode.

No traction control.

No wheelie control.

There was a throttle cable connected to four carburettors and a very large engine waiting at the other end.

Your right hand was the riding mode.

There is something refreshingly uncomplicated about that now.

And probably something slightly terrifying about it in 1987.

Oil-Cooled

One of the most interesting things about these early GSX-Rs is how Suzuki kept the engine cool.

Not with the full liquid-cooling systems that would eventually become normal on high-performance motorcycles.

Suzuki developed SACS — the Suzuki Advanced Cooling System.

Engine oil wasn't simply lubricating the motor. Large volumes of it were circulated through the engine to draw heat away from critical areas before passing through the oil cooler.

Suzuki says the GSX-R1100 system could spray around 20 litres of oil per minute onto the cylinder head area, helping the engine remain lighter than a comparable conventional air-cooled design.

It is wonderfully mechanical.

Look at the front of an early GSX-R and you can see the big oil cooler sitting there in the airflow.

Nothing is pretending to be anything else.

It looks important because it is.

That's one of the things I like about motorcycles from this period.

You can often look at the machine and start to understand how it works.

When Everyone Else Was Still Using Steel

The aluminium frame might be one of the most important parts of the early GSX-R story.

In the early 1980s, most big road-going superbikes were still built around steel frames.

Steel worked.

It was strong, familiar and relatively cheap to manufacture.

But Suzuki was becoming obsessed with another number.

Weight.

Engineer Etsuo Yokouchi believed that making a motorcycle lighter improved almost everything at once.

Acceleration.

Braking.

Handling.

Direction changes.

Instead of simply finding more horsepower, Suzuki started looking at every part of the motorcycle and asking how much of it they really needed.

That thinking had already appeared in the lightweight GSX-R400.

Then Suzuki took what it had learned from that bike, combined it with experience from endurance racing, and went much further with the GSX-R750.

The frame itself was heavily influenced by Suzuki’s XR41 endurance racer.

But building an aluminium race frame was one thing.

Building thousands of them at a price ordinary riders could afford was another.

That is where Suzuki got clever.

A conventional steel 750 frame could be made from roughly 96 separate pieces.

Suzuki redesigned the GSX-R frame using a mixture of extruded aluminium sections and cast components and reduced that number to just 26.

They even developed an aluminium alloy that could retain the strength they needed after welding without requiring an expensive final heat-treatment process.

The finished GSX-R750 frame weighed only 8.1 kilograms.

Less than half the weight of the conventional steel frame Suzuki used for comparison.

And this wasn't exotic technology reserved for a handful of factory race bikes.

You could walk into a Suzuki dealership and buy it.

That was the important part.

The GSX-R helped take aluminium-frame thinking out of the paddock and put it underneath ordinary riders.

By the time the GSX-R1100 arrived, Suzuki could take that same lightweight philosophy and wrap it around a 1052cc engine.

That combination was what made the big GSX-R so outrageous.

A motor with genuine open-class muscle.

Inside a chassis built with the mentality of a race bike.

It wasn't just more power.

Suzuki had changed the structure underneath it.

The Bike I Wanted to Look At

The engineering is why the GSX-R1100 deserves a place in motorcycle history.

But if I’m being truthful, that isn’t the whole reason there is one sitting in this garage.

I just love the way it looks.

There is something about the first-generation GSX-R that could only have happened in the 1980s.

Twin round headlights buried inside a square fairing.

A huge fuel tank.

Broad, almost completely flat side panels.

An aluminium frame left out in the open instead of hidden behind bodywork.

Big 18-inch wheels.

And graphics that make absolutely no attempt to be subtle.

The early bikes eventually became known as Slabsides, and one look at the fairings tells you why.

They are wide.

Flat.

Square-edged.

Almost architectural.

There is none of the tightly shrink-wrapped bodywork of a modern superbike.

Instead the GSX-R looks like a piece of endurance-racing machinery that somebody reluctantly fitted with indicators and a number plate.

That is a huge part of its appeal.

When Race Replica Actually Meant Something

Today almost every sports bike borrows its styling from racing.

In the mid-1980s, the GSX-R looked genuinely different.

Suzuki wasn’t simply putting sporty graphics on a conventional road motorcycle.

The aluminium frame was visible.

The oil cooler was visible.

The fairings were there because race bikes wore fairings.

The twin headlights looked like they belonged on a machine built to keep racing after dark.

The whole thing gave the impression that function had dictated the shape first and somebody had worried about making it pretty afterwards.

And somehow that made it beautiful.

Not traditionally beautiful.

Purposeful.

The Colours Matter Too

The 1987 model came in two particularly strong combinations.

Pearl Cool White with Candy Starlit Blue Metallic.

And Space Black with Pearl Twinkle Red.

Both look unmistakably period.

But the blue and white scheme has become especially connected with the early GSX-R identity.

White bodywork.

Deep metallic blue.

Red detailing.

The raw aluminium frame running straight through the middle of it.

It looks like a Suzuki before you even read the badge.

And that matters now because the bikes that survived exactly like that are becoming harder to find.

The Parts Nobody Thought They Would Want Again

The strange thing about collectible motorcycles is that the things people removed first often become the things everybody wants thirty years later.

The GSX-R1100 suffered from this more than most.

When these became affordable second-hand superbikes, owners modified them.

The stock exhaust came off.

Indicators were replaced with small flush-mounted versions.

Rear fenders were cut down.

Smoked screens went on.

Fairings were drilled, painted or removed altogether.

Some became streetfighters.

Others were crashed and rebuilt with whatever parts were available.

At the time, nobody was thinking about preserving a future classic.

They were just making their bike faster, louder or more fashionable.

Now the equation has reversed.

An original exhaust matters.

Factory fairings matter.

The correct mirrors matter.

The proper indicators and rear mudguard matter.

Original wheels matter.

Even paint and decals matter.

The parts once considered bulky or outdated are now some of the hardest pieces to replace.

And that gives an untouched GSX-R a kind of value that horsepower alone can’t explain.

Why This One Is Here

That is really why the GSX-R1100 belongs in the Old School Garage.

It represents an important step in the evolution of the superbike.

The aluminium frame.

The obsession with weight.

The oil-cooled engine.

The direct connection between race development and a road motorcycle you could actually buy.

But it also looks incredible.

And that matters.

Motorcycles aren't collected entirely with spreadsheets.

Sometimes you walk into the garage, look at a machine and it just makes you feel something.

The early GSX-R does that for me.

It looks fast standing still.

It looks mechanical.

It looks unmistakably like the decade it came from.

And every time I see those twin headlights, square fairings and exposed aluminium frame, I’m reminded why I wanted one in the first place.