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Whacking Permalink Archive 27 October 2004 Suzuki TLR: Hamamatsu's lost V-twin Two days ago, I posted about Honda's SP2, the bike Honda didn't want to build, but did, just so they could beat Ducati. While it was the first time a twin from Japan had beaten Ducati, it certainly wasn't the first time a Japanese twin had been built for that purpose. Suzuki had been racing in World Superbike since 1996 with the four-cylinder GSXR-750. Suzuki (and pretty much everyone else) were bewildered why such a superb sportsbike on the road made such a dismal racebike. Suzuki made the decision to play Ducati at it's own game and build a 1000cc v-twin. The 1997 release of the TL-S v-twin proved popular, even if the bike proved a twitchy beast of a thing to ride. It was well-priced and very powerful: a full 15hp more grunt than the street version of the Ducati 916. The idea of a full-on superbike-spec version was promising indeed. The following year saw the relase of the TL-R. It featured an upgraded, fuel-injected version of the TL-S motor, an upgraded chassis and sharper steering geometry. It certainly looked the part, and certainly seemed more capable of providing a competitive race platform than the troubled GSXR, especially as Suzuki made available to the public a factory-level racing kit, allowing anyone with the money the same level of race technology as the Suzuki factory itself.
Sadly, none of it worked out the way Suzuki had hoped. First reports from the motorcycling press were underwhelming: the bike was a whopping 18kgs heavier than the GSXR, less aerodynamic, was difficult to set up and didn't handle. Everyone loved the motor though. It was in fact at the time arguably the best production sportsbike engine in the world. Inexplicably, Suzuki had wrapped this class-leading engine in a fat, ill-handling tub of a chassis. Even more inexplicably, it had retained the controversial rear rotary suspension damper from the TL-S, an innovation which everyone hated the first time around. The unit faded badly during fast riding and never seemed to give the rider what they wanted. During the release, the Suzuki engineers promised they would have no problem cutting weight and setting the bike up for world superbikes. But the bike never showed. It would never enter a race in world supers, though it did do some round of the American and German superbike championships with poor results. By the end of '99, word had got out that Suzuki had quietly dropped the whole project. Production of the bike ended two years later. The TLR did not receive a single update during its production run, other than a change of paint schemes. It makes you wonder why the hell they bothered. Sad really. While it was a disaster as a race machine, it made a hell of a roadbike, especially compared to the TL-S. Great looking & sounding, it had an arse-kicking motor and a stable chassis that made it a blast to ride through a series of fast sweepers. While it never sold as well as the GSXR, it sold a lot more than Honda did with the SP2. It is also interesting to note that the best part of the TLR lives on: The engine (in various states of tune) is today used in the Suzuki sv1000 series, the V-Strom, the Cagiva Raptor, the Bimota SBK-8, the Bakker Barracuda and probably a few others I'm forgetting. It's
fair to say that while the original goals of this odd project were never
met, the sales of its engine have proved to be a nice little earner for
Suzuki.
Retired diplomat Tony Kevin, who can't understand why the Australian public doesn't care about the SIEV-X issue (essentially, an unseaworthy foreign ship sinks in foreign waters, killing 353 people, and it's somehow all John Howard's fault), is very angry about the federal election result. Apparently, it was the result of the nasty, unfair voting system we have:
A majority of voters prefered the Coalition to Labor, so it's "perverse" that the Coalition got elected. I don't quite get it myself, but fear not, Tony elaborates:
I gather arithmetic wasn't Tony's favourite subject at school. Let me say this for any slow-witted readers out there: if a candidate gets a majority of primary votes, you don't need to go to preferences. If the Greens voters stayed with Labor, the Coalition candidate still wins. What is it exactly this pinhead doesn't understand about this? Kevin then contradicts himself by saying the Coalition won because people who voted for the government are selfish ignorant scum, unlike the caring, intelligent folk who vote Labor:
Shucks. I feel all guilty now. He moves on to a final summary:
Horrible. Fancy having a vote-counting system which favours the party that actually gets the most votes! Have we no shame?
(we can replace "public values" with "idiotic leftist social engineering that nobody wants")
Yes, like actually having policies people like. Fairly radical concept, no? If
people like Kevin are the intellectual core of Labor voters, the Coalition
will be in government for the next twenty years.
A note to my Western Australian readers If you ever find yourself in the same pub as Joe Vialls, pick up a barstool and bash the cunt's head in for me. Check out his latest report:
Even as a raving crank, Joe has weird delusions of normalcy:
Oh, and you know the bomb which injured 3 Aussie soldiers the other day? Joe says it was planted by 'Israeli Special Forces', to threaten Australia into providing more troops. Oh, and he refers to Saddam's regime as "the legitimate Batthist government". You
can e-mail Joe at joevialls@gawab.com
to tell him how much you appreciate his brave investigative work.
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