Suzuki's first commission was for a sportier version of its 650cc four-cylinder shaftie. But this Suzuki commission enabled Target, and particularly Fellstrom (who was the main creative force behind the Katana) to take those ideas further still. Target, comprising founder Hans-Georg Kasten, Jan Fellstrom and Hans Muth, had sprung to prominence with a restyled MV Agusta (which bore a striking resemblance to the subsequent Katanas) which they had created in association with, and published by, German magazine Motorrad. In the late 1970s, Suzuki had become concerned about the stagnating design of the 'Universal Japanese Motorcycles' of the era and wanted to make its bikes stand out with what it called 'a European type design'.Īnd, with its European HQ being in Germany, Suzuki Germany marketing manager Manfred Becker turned to newly-formed German stylists, Target Design, to come up with the goods. In fact, the Katana was different from the off - in being the first Japanese motorcycle styled by an external design house. Concept bikes don't usually make it into production, after all - they're too wild for that.Īnd even when they do, as with Yamaha's MT-01 or Suzuki's own B-King, they usually end up being sales flops. Commissioned initially as a one-off 'design exercise', a concept bike was first displayed in 1979 and public reaction was so great that the Katana ended up being much, much more. Blended-in seats, side panels and tanks, to give just one example, are part of the Katana's legacy.Īnd yet the Katana nearly didn't happen at all. ![]() While last, but by no means least, the whole family of Katanas which followed, ranging from more accessible middleweights like the GS650G shaftie and affordable 550, to the 'homologation special' GSX1000S (complete with Mikuni smoothbore carbs) to the last true original Katana, 1984's GSX750S3 with distinctive, 'pop-up' headlamp, gave the Katana family a breadth, a performance pedigree and a technological significance that, overall, was massively influential.Įlements of 'Katana style' didn't just dribble down across Suzuki's range in the early '80s, it lives on to this day. Second, with the original 1100 flagged by Suzuki as the 'world's fastest production motorcycle', the first Katana also had the performance credibility to back up its peculiar cosmetics. That in itself, in the era of Star Wars and Buck Rogers, made Suzuki's space-age newcomer stand out. That significance is down to a number of things: first, and most obviously, the 1980 GSX1100S Katana, to give the original its full name, looked, with its sharp angles, blended-in bodywork and space-age silver livery, like literally nothing else. No Suzuki - no motorcycle even - not before or since, had been so striking. And yet unlike those, the Katana was also very specific to an era: the early eighties.įrom 1980-1985, if you fancied a Suzuki capable of sending shivers down your spine - you wanted a Katana, either on your bedroom wall or, preferably, garage floor. Like those, the Katana was not just a category of machine but a whole design ethos. Like the Kawasaki Ninja or Honda FireBlade which both followed, the Katana was not just one model but a whole family of bikes. The point of contact between the two parts then undergoes a thermal shock which will allow the austenite to take on its shiny solid structure called martensite.There's no doubt one of the most significant names in Japanese motorcycle model history is that of the Suzuki Katana. This selective quenching also forms the quenching line (hamon), the shapes of which are characteristic of schools and blacksmiths: the less protected part cools quickly (which makes it harder) while the more protected part cools more slowly ( which allows it to retain its flexibility). Thus, when the blade is soaked in water, only the edge will be cooled quickly enough to form a hard steel, which will give the edge of the weapon extreme hardness while maintaining high impact resistance for the whole. ![]() ![]() and the sides of the blade (ie the parts of the blade whose flexibility we want to keep). The concept is simple: by covering part of the blade with a mixture of refractory clay, charcoal powder, silica and other elements kept secret by each blacksmith, we end up isolating the back from the cold. For this, Japanese blacksmiths developed the concept of partial quenching, a technique that Westerners, with a few exceptions, will not master until very late and never so well. This step consists in immersing a metal brought to high temperature in a cold bath in order to keep at room temperature a modification of the molecular structure obtained when hot and thus increase the hardness of the steel. Quenching An essential step which will make the difference between a good saber and a lesser quality saber.
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