Suzuki’s GSX-S1000GT is criminally underappreciated

Picture the scene: I’ve pulled into a motorway services on a busy summer afternoon. I rejuvenate with the help of a cup of tea and chocolate croissant, and, upon walking back to the 2025 GSX-S1000GT that I’ve borrowed from Suzuki, some part of my brain observes that the car park is considerably less full than when I arrived.

Helmet on. Fire up the 999cc inline four-cylinder engine. Revel in its menacing, deep bass hum at idle. Visor down. Roll out of the services…

…And instantly I observe that I am the only person on the motorway. I’m not speaking figuratively here. In all three lanes, there is not one other vehicle. Not one HGV. Not one car. Not even another bike. Just me.

In my head, I put the pieces together and realise that some kind of obstruction has stopped traffic somewhere before the services.

So, think about this: It’s a warm, sunny, dry day. I’m completely alone on a motorway that I know well (and therefore know that there are no speed cameras ahead). And I’m sitting astride a motorcycle that’s driven by an engine derived from the mighty Gixxer. What would you do in this situation?

For legal purposes, I want to stress that I carried on in a safe, prudent, and entirely legal manner.

But we all know what I could have done, right? I could have dropped into a full tuck, cracked the throttle, and discovered that the GSX-S1000GT accelerates with almost terrifying ease. I could have felt my heart and lungs go all funny with simultaneous glee and fear. I could have hit a speed that might break records in some parts of the country, and ultimately lost my nerve/licence long before the engine ran out of puff.

Again, for legal purposes, it is very important for me to say that none of that happened. But, you know, it could have.

And if it had, that might have been the point when I screamed at the top of my lungs: “HOLY F–K, I LOVE THIS BIKE!”

A traditional sport tourer

The GSX-S1000GT was first introduced in late 2021 for the 2022 model year. It didn’t get the best introduction to the UK market. With pandemic weirdness still upon us, Suzuki wasn’t able to host the traditional “sun and paella” type of press ride that one would normally choose for a bike like this. Instead, it took journos to Scotland for rain and haggis, with an extra helping of rain.

It was a setting that demonstrated the bike’s bonafides in terms of the ‘touring’ side of the sport-touring equation, but offered precious little opportunity to really make the most of its handling prowess and iconic powerplant.

Here at Visordown, we made sure to ride the bike a second time - in better weather - to gain a better understanding of what it can do. Other media outlets didn’t do that. And maybe that’s one of the reasons the bike doesn’t seem to have caught on as I feel it should have. 

The Suzuki is a traditional sport-touring motorcycle, the likes of which had all but died out by the time it arrived on the scene. 

Back in Ye Olden Tymes, sport tourers were all the rage. Almost every manufacturer offered its take on the genre; some offered several versions. 

ChatGPT tells me that the 1977 BMW R100RS was the first sport tourer. I’d argue that things go back further than that - at least to 1973, with the BMW R90S. BMW actually raced that bike - winning at the Isle of Man TT, Daytona 200, and in the AMA Superbike championship. Customers equipped the thing with saddlebags and, voila: sport tourer.

The inability to definitively name THE first sport tourer speaks to the malleability of the genre’s definition. Perhaps the easiest definition is this: a sportbike made comfortable.

Traditionally, that meant taking a sport bike, altering its ergonomics a little bit and, usually, tweaking the engine’s performance to make it a little more road friendly. The idea was to deliver a sportbike that could be ridden from the flat, uninteresting places where most of us live to the curvy, undulating places where sportbikes shine.

Over the last decade or so, the definition of sport tourer has changed. Arguably, there is now far greater emphasis on the ‘tourer’ side of the equation, with adventure bike-style ergonomics offering an easier ride - especially for those with a long inseam or creaky knees.

Sure, there are still some sport tourers that go like stink - eg, the BMW S 1000 XR or the recently unveiled Ducati Multistrada V4 RS - but even they make some concessions in terms of trading cornering ability for comfort.

A traditional sport tourer is almost always going to give you the advantage in the twisties.

An underappreciated joy

Whereas the trad sport tourer was once the ‘it’ segment of motorcycling - as popular as the adventure bike segment is now - these days, there are really only two options. OK, maybe three if you include the 144bhp BMW R 1300 RS. 

The BMW’s 1300cc boxer twin isn’t derived from a sportbike engine, however. Whereas the engines driving the GSX-S1000GT and the venerable Kawasaki Ninja 1100 SX are. The latter more indirectly: the Ninja’s 1099cc inline four can trace its roots all the way back to the 1994 ZX-9R. The Suzuki’s K5 engine comes more directly from the GSX-R1000.

The K5 is a legendary powerplant. Originally designed as a superbike engine - for the 2005 GSX-R1000 - it was quickly found to be so functional and tractable that Suzuki put it to work in numerous applications. At present, it’s the four-cylinder wündermotor that drives not just the GSX-S1000GT, but also the GSX-S1000GX, GSX-S1000, and Katana. 

As a result of the engine having appeared in several models, it’s estimated that well in excess of 200,000 units have been produced over the years. And you’ll find plenty of people who will argue that it remains better than any modern powerplant.

“Even against today’s engines, it still offers the best combination of strong low-end torque and high peak power,” says former MotoGp and Superbike racer Martin Bauer. 

Smooth, torquey, and powerful pretty much everywhere in the rev range, the GSX-S1000GT’s engine is paired with a slick gearbox and even slicker quickshifter - certainly one of the best I’ve ever encountered. 

Peak outputs on the GSX-S1000GT are 150 bhp and 78.1 lb-ft of torque. I mentioned above that traditional sport tourers featured re-tuned engines. Manufacturers would bring down peak horsepower in the process of delivering greater torque. Suzuki didn’t really need to do this with the K5 - the torque was pretty much there already - but has done so anyway for the sake of durability. In this set-up the K5 is bulletproof.

Add to that a just-right suspension with fully adjustable front forks and adjustable preload/rebound on the rear. It’s not the fancy electronic set-up you get on the GSX-S1000GX, and I’ve seen some criticisms that the rear is too soft for track use, but for my road-focused riding I find it pretty much unflappable. 

Ergonomics are sporty but not too much so for this 6-foot-1 rider. And on and on and on. There’s no real need to review this bike - we did that three years ago. What I want to underline here is just how good it is. All the things that a rider would ask for are there.

And suddenly I can’t help but think of an observation that a representative from a certain American motorcycle brand made to me many, many years ago: “The customer doesn’t actually know what they want until we give it to them.” 

If you had looked at motorcycling forums in the week, month, or year before the GSX-S1000GT was first revealed, you would have found post after post from (mostly) old-boy riders lamenting the death of traditional sport touring motorcycles and pleading with manufacturers to revive the segment.

“I want a bike that offers XYZ!” the posts would shout, with XYZ being everything that you get on the GSX-S1000GT.

This is it. This is the bike that people were asking for. The bike that some seemingly out-of-touch riders are still asking for. It’s here. It’s right in front of you. And yet, according to How Many Left, there are currently just 738 registered GSX-S1000GTs on UK roads. 

Compare this against, say, the roughly 720 Harley-Davidson Street Bob models from 2022 or newer (the GSX-S1000GT was launched for 2022). Completely different genre, but similarly priced. Well, actually, the Harley costs £2,000 more than the luggage-equipped GSX-S1000GT+.

So, is it a genre thing? Possibly. Maybe, as is so often the case with every other aspect of life, people on the internet don’t actually reflect the majority opinion. Maybe not that many people really want a traditional sport tourer anymore. 

Perhaps those that did/do want the traditional take on the segment were already being served by the Kawasaki Ninja 1100SX and Ninja 1000SX before it (and Z1000SX before that). There are roughly 1,700 Kawasaki Ninja 1100SX and Ninja 1000SX models of 2022 or newer on UK roads.

Combine the Kawasaki and Suzuki numbers and you’re still well short of the 4,653 registered BMW S 1000 XR models on UK roads. And the S 1000 XR is just one of many modern takes on the sport-touring concept.

Right bike wrong time?

So, why isn’t the GSX-S1000GT more popular? I think it’s possible that it suffers just a little bit from Suzuki’s modern reputation for prudence. Ever since the Great Recession, Suzuki’s had a habit of making safe bets. 

And perhaps the Japanese manufacturer doesn’t do a good enough job of promoting the fact that safe bets are often reliable ones. I used to own a Suzuki (a 2015 V-Strom 1000 - another bike that relied on an old engine), and although it wasn’t the flashiest machine with cutting-edge tech, it started every damn time. It was well-balanced and utterly usable. I don’t think enough riders put enough stock in reliability.

But, mostly, I suspect that there just aren’t that many people who want a traditional sport tourer. Not as many as internet forums would have led us to believe, anyway. 

And of those who did want such a bike, perhaps they were largely being served by the Kawasaki. Through its variations, the Ninja 1100SX/Ninja1000SX/Z1000SX has been a stalwart of the traditional way of thinking since 2010. But for 2022, when the title went to Suzuki, the Kawasaki has been the bestselling sport tourer in the UK for more than a decade. 

But sometimes that was simply because it was the only sport tourer. Times move on, and as the BMW’s numbers prove, most riders have embraced the new way of thinking about sport-touring bikes.

As someone who is currently riding Suzuki’s modern-take GSX-S1000GX, I won’t lie and say that I think that the old way of doing things is better. But I will say that I think it is too quickly dismissed. And I suspect that for many riders - if they could pull their thoughts away from want-needing the absolute newest, flashiest thing - the GSX-S1000GT offers everything they actually desire in a bike, and a little more.

It’s criminal that there are so few GTs on the road today. That means there are so many people missing out on what might be their ideal motorcycle. The only solution os for you to go test ride one. The package is so, so, so good. Maybe even perfect.

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