2023 Suzuki Hayabusa Review | Daily Rider

Hello everybody, Zach Gords here with RevZilla and welcome to another episode of Daily Rider. Our guest today is the Suzuki Hayabusa, the famous Falcon. Very basically that is a 1300cc sport bike that weighs nearly 600 pounds and costs almost $20,000. It is big and bold and even though it came out almost 25 years ago it is still very fast, which hopefully we'll experiment with a little bit today. Ultimately it's a living legend of the motorcycling world and the question with bikes like this is kind of the same. Is it still good and valid in 2023 as a motorcycle? Well there's nothing like a ride to work to find out, yeah? Buckle up everybody, it's Busa time! Okie dokie everybody, Suzuki Hayabusa, named after a peregrine falcon I think because peregrine falcons feed on blackbirds and at the time the fastest bike in the west or perhaps the east maybe was the Honda CBR 1100 Blackbird, so they went with the Falcon because it eats blackbirds. Kind of a fun genesis of the name and obviously just such a famous mark at this point. Everybody knows what Hayabusa means, heck everybody knows what Busa means. So underneath this pearl white fairing here is a 1340 cc inline-four, quite a large engine, 1.3 liter engine essentially, the size of lots of car engines, and it cranks out plenty of power. And when it comes to stopping there's big old Brembo Stylema calipers and big rotors, I forget how big, 300 or 310 maybe, and it's good to have because it's a big bike, it's fast, and it's pretty heavy. Aside from that, pretty basic sport bike architecture. It's an aluminum twin-spar frame, basic swing arm, basic exhaust routing. I scra- I did this, see this? I did that. I'm sad, I'm gonna have to tell Suzuki that I did that. It was an accident, I didn't mean to. The pipes are massive and they're on both sides. Yeah, it just doesn't shy away from being big and bold and a statement, you know, whether it's the like full-on white pearl paint or the chrome strip or the big gills, the big exhaust pipes, the big sort of angry bird face. Yeah, it's a statement kind of machine. And as with many Suzuki's, we can fire up this dash here, you see it's a classic kind of twin analog dash with a little colored TFT in the middle, which is kind of classy, we'll take a closer look at that later. As with many Suzuki's, it's got the single button start, which I kind of like actually, seems like kind of gimmicky, but I think it's kind of fun actually. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Inside, a beast lurks. Okay, let's get our boost on, shall we? Saddle up on this nice thick perch. When it comes time to test passenger accommodations, keep in mind this little handrail here, which I'll talk about, and how kind of wide this little pillion perch is, despite it being very sport bikey. All right, everybody. Yes, let's do it. Okie dokie, let's talk about specs as is tradition here on Daily Rider. I said this bike costs nearly $20,000, which is technically true. $18,799, I believe, is the base price. Not a crazy price, I don't think, to ask, for a living legend, after all. While we're stuck waiting for the train here, it's a good time to talk about seat height. It is listed at 31.5 inches, which is pretty average, regular old seat height. You can see there's a pretty significant bend in my knee here. I find it to be quite accommodating, actually. It's wide. It's kind of a girthy bike, being a big engine and heavy and all that jazz, but it's not so bad to sit on, and the seat is pretty wide and comfy. As for other specs, there's no claimed horsepower, technically, from Suzuki, though, if you look it up, if you spend some time researching, you will see probably around 180 or 185 horsepower and around 100 or 110 foot-pounds of torque. So horsepower numbers are sort of similar to 1,000cc superbikes. The torque number is a little bit closer to something like a Goldwing and a lot more torque on tap than a 1,000cc sport bike, which we will experiment with practically at some point here. Other important specs, it is a 5.3-gallon gas tank, I believe, and when it was full on the daily rider scales, 581 pounds, which is, you know, no featherweight. Yeah, I don't know what to say, except that when you open the throttle, you can kind of see why it's a serious lump of metal. Stuck going very slow on ramps. Good time to talk about ergonomics, and it's sort of a comfortable sport bike riding position here. Seat-to-peg distance is a little tight, but, you know, not as bad as an actual sport bike, and the lean to the handlebars is fairly aggressive, though not as aggressive as a true, you know, 600 or 1,000cc sport bike. It's on the sort of, like, comfortable end of the uncomfortable sport bike spectrum. As for opening the throttle, as I've alluded to a few times now, we'll do a quick experiment here. I went up to sixth gear on the Hayabusa. We're at 2,000 rpm. We're going 40 miles an hour in top gear, and I'm going to merge onto the highway here, and not even going to open the throttle, just going to twist it a little bit, and we're going 80, just like that. Top gear roll on 40 miles an hour to 80 miles an hour at two-thirds throttle or something. It's got a lot of thrust on tap, and I'll probably make at least a few more jokes about how much power it has and sort of allude to that in the rest of this episode, but to put a finer point on it right off the bat, I think part of the mystique of the Hayabusa is that you just never really have to open the throttle. You can, sure, and it's fun, but one of the things I really like about using this bike from day to day, even if you do want to accelerate quickly, it's kind of rare that you actually ever open the throttle, and as I said, I think that really adds to the legend of the Hayabusa in your own mind when you sort of have this tickle in the back of your head that I never actually asked it to do everything that it could do, and yet I'm satisfied, which is kind of a fun feeling, and I don't know, a little bit rare in the motorcycle world, I think. This speed and this type of riding, if you want to truck along the highway, I mean, if you wanted to ride from Los Angeles to Seattle, or from Miami to Nashville, or Milwaukee to Houston, or Rome to London, you get it, you all get it. The point is, if you want to take a long trip, this bike would be pretty darn good, actually. It isn't hugely comfortable, it's a little bit tight in legroom for tall people, and it does offer a little bit of a crouch forward, but the seat is really thick, and wide, and very comfortable. Not once have I thought anything other than this is excellent about the seat, and it's just like happy to cruise along like this, you know, and going whatever it is here, 65, 70 miles an hour, and it's just very, very comfortable, and the engine is absolutely loping along, just will do this all day, every day, until you're dead, until you die of, you know, starvation, or thirst, or old age, or something like that, that's what I meant, not that the bike is going to kill you, just want that to be clear, and when you do cruise happily on the two-lane tarmac, or even wider, say, fuel mileage was calculated about mid-30s, 30 to 37 for most of the tanks of gas I burned through on the Hayabusa. Harry borrowed it one day, and I won't go into any detail, I'll just say that he said he made very good time when he was riding out to run an errand, and that tank of gas was about 31 miles per gallon, so if you want to bring your average speed up to Aerie Henning territory, you might see low 30s, but more than likely it'll be mid-30s, and with a 5.3 gallon tank, it gives you pretty good legs, actually, which is not necessarily something you expect from a large engine sport bike, but the Hayabusa is all about defying expectations, really. Truck traffic is really serious, glad we're clear of that business, we can get back to talking about sport touring on Hayabusa, the important stuff, right? It's always been kind of interesting to me that the Hayabusa has this reputation for being a sport touring bike, because, I mean, people will tell you that any motorcycle is comfortable, if someone rides an RS6 for three years, they're just going to tell you, yeah, it's pretty good, and it's pretty comfortable, and I didn't mind it, because you get used to what you're used to, and that's fine, I think it's an interesting curiosity that Suzuki came out with this bike to really just set the world on fire, and you know, redefine the ultimate sport category, or create it, or whatever it claimed to have done with the introduction of the Hayabusa, and ultimately, people just sort of gravitate toward what they want to do anyway, and the people that were interested in Hayabusas, many of them anyway, were interested in logging miles, and when they did so, they realized the bike actually was fairly comfortable. Kind of makes me happy that this sledgehammer of a motorcycle that was supposed to be this shot across the bow to the industry, and fire and brimstone, is the bike that a lot of people are sort of like, yeah, I like just spending my days on it, cruising down the road, it's nice, that being said about all the touring chops, the mirrors aren't great, they're like a little small, and a little bit far away, and the placement is okay, they're just, yeah, the field of view isn't awesome, dead smooth though, I got to give the Hayabusa that. Kind of row down through the gearbox with the quick shifter, it's a good time to mention, perhaps, that the quick shifter is very good on this bike, in my opinion, just buttery smooth, like especially down here, like between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, boop, boop, excellent, dead smooth, up or down, really, really nicely tuned. All right, stop sign challenge on this 600 pound sport bike, and I screwed up the first stop sign, can't be that surprised, I suppose. Let's change the ride mode, shall we? We'll go from ride mode A, which is the most aggressive throttle map, and least intrusive electronics, to ride mode C, which is one of the more tame ride modes, with low power level, and so on and so forth. We'll see how stop sign number two goes, now that we're in C mode, maybe it's C for city, it's not really, but, oh, I screwed that one up too. Yeah, it's not a very easy, um, a very easy bike to do footless stops on. The, the weight is like carried fairly low, I suppose, just because it's kind of a long and low bike in general, but, um, but it's not necessarily easy to handle, I wouldn't say. Can you get one, one stop, footless stop, Zach? Oh, my gosh, that was a close one, but I think we did it, though. I don't actually like ride mode C, I'm gonna go, oh, oh, geez, oh, geez, nope, no, I don't want to do that, I want to go to ride mode B, nope, ride mode B, ride mode B, come on. Okay, now we're in B mode, I'm gonna try this stop sign, can we do this one? Nope, nope, oh, this is, uh, this, uh, this Hayabusa is my white whale, when it comes to the stop sign challenge, which is not the only comparison to a white whale that this bike might, uh, encounter, you might say. Let's, uh, let's do something I know that I can do, which is talk about the dash, instead of trying to do stop sign, full of stops, which isn't working. So, like I said, two big analog dashes, uh, big gauges here, rather, um, speedo over here that goes up to 180 miles an hour, just in case you need it, and, um, nice big analog tack over here. I like the classic look of the dash, analog fuel gauge over there, and, uh, temp gauge on this side, which I think is also kind of fun, and then this, um, this little TFT, color TFT in the middle of the dash there, which, um, I think works quite well. Uh, you can adjust ride modes, as I just did, it's where you'll see cruise control, so if you turn cruise on, you can see it changes to cruise control, instead of seeing a gear position indicator, um, or the power mode, rather, and it's packed with good information. You can cycle through some stuff that, oh, no, I screwed it up, let me see here, you gotta go down to the trip meter mode situation there, and if you hold down one of these buttons here, you can go into this, uh, you know, menu here, where you can change display settings, uh, ride modes, uh, hill hold, yeah, units, and, uh, you know, but in my opinion, it's a quite a, quite a good dash, comprehensive, and allows you to dig into plenty of options, but it's nice and clean to look at, and, um, and satisfying to use, in my opinion. Okay, I talked about the dash, we can have a green light now, thank you so much, thank you so much, excellent, excellent. You might have seen a little, uh, LF, I think it is, on the dash there, which is lift control, or something like that, wheelie control, basically, so when I accelerated just then, um, the bike said, no, no, no, no, front wheel, you stay on the ground, um, which is an update that this motorcycle got in 2021 or two, I believe, uh, fairly recently, was to get a complete revamp of, full suite of IMU electronics, and, uh, launch control, and a speed limit setting, where you can set the limit of the bike to 65 or 85 miles an hour, then it won't let you go over that, but it'll let you play around beneath that, so yeah, got a pretty comprehensive suite of electronics in the most recent update, which I think is good, comprehensive enough to call the Hayabusa state-of-the-art, which it was getting a little bit long in the tooth before that, because I think the previous update was 2013, or something like that, so, okay, final stop sign, can we get a foot to stop in, can we do it, yes, I did it, it was, uh, it wasn't super graceful, but, I got one or two in there, finally, I'm gonna go back to mode A, I like mode A, actually, better yet, I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna go to mode U1, because user one is the mode that I programmed that has the slightly softer throttled map, but the lower settings for intrusion of electronics, if you know what I mean, all right, it's time for a cruise control, uh, passenger test, patent pending, trademark daily rider, if we pop our way back onto the passenger pegs here, um, similar to the riding position on the actual bike, it's, uh, it's very, it's sporty, but the seat is wide and thick and comfy, and there's that handhold that I talked to you about before, that's actually quite nice, it makes you feel secure, you don't have to lean forward quite as much as the rider if you don't want to on the passenger peg, so this is better than the accommodations you need to ride across town, in my opinion, it's quite nice, and maybe not like all-day road trip comfortable, like touring bike comfortable, but, but surprisingly good for what the Hayabusa is, all righty, off into the twisty road section of the daily rider route, and this is where there's a real split in expectations for the Hayabusa, I think, there are true sport bike people, some of whom commented on the Instagram post and said, oh, what a hilarious, like it's not really a sport bike, what a joke, it's such a pig, it must be just so awful to ride through a set of corners, well, it's not, and then there are some people that might think of it as a sport bike, you know, they go, oh, it's a GSX 1300R, right, it's a sport bike, it must be great in the corners, well, it's not exactly a GSXR in the corners, it's somewhere in the middle, but it's, it's, I think, much more pleasant and, uh, and confidence-inspiring to ride through a set of curves than people in general expect or think of a 600-pound, 1300cc bike. It sort of starts with the engine, which is smooth and sort of gentle when you need it to be and fast when you need it to be, and it's sort of planted and balanced and it just doesn't do anything unpredictable, it's stable, it's not perfect, it's heavy, I mean, you know, when you move the thing from side to side, it doesn't feel agile and light, but it's, and not difficult to use in any way, in my opinion. Another little fun fact in the history of the Hayabusa was that the first launch, the very first press event where the bike was introduced to the global motorcycling press was at Catalunya Circuit in Spain, they turned journalists loose on, on a MotoGP track, basically, on the Hayabusa, so Suzuki was looking to promote this, the sporting aspect of it, and they wanted people to be able to hold the sucker wide open down the massive kilometer-long Catalunya front straight, and I believe a few journalists crashed, but that's neither here nor there. The point of the story of this evolution is that that was a slightly different bike, all things considered, I believe it was 1298cc engine, the displacement bump to 1340 happened in 2008, then the bike got ABS in 2013, and then that comprehensive suite of sort of state-of-the-art 2020s electronics with an IMU and all that jazz just a couple years ago, so it has had some evolutions. It's easy to look at the Hayabusa and think, well, it's just the same old bike that Suzuki's parading around the motorcycle world for 25 years, but it is, it has gone through some evolutions, larger engine and, and the like, so credit where credit's due, I suppose. Well, let's do a little second gear roll on here, 30 miles an hour open this throttle. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, everybody just take it easy. It's such a delicious rush of power because it's so strong everywhere in the rev range that you just, you just keep thinking like, well, okay, that's got to be it, and then it just like, it ramps it up slightly a little bit more and slightly a little bit more and slightly a little more until it's at nine or ten or eleven thousand and, and you're tearing a hole in space-time continuum. It's intense and ridiculous and delightful in my opinion. Okay, red light, you talk about them brakes, brakes are solid Brembo calipers, you can't actually see the brakes because the, you're so wide at the front, oh goodness, but anyway, good brakes. Rubber lines, I believe, but still, very sharp, solid brakes, which is a good feeling when you're, when you've got all that atomic thrust on tap. Alrighty, so perhaps it's time to reflect on what we talked about at the beginning of the show. Is the Hayabusa still a good bike? Is it still valid these days? And I think to a certain extent, it is kind of clinging to the fame of a bygone era, as I said before, but it's so good at what it does that it's hard not to be charmed by the engine and the character of the bike. I think the big thing that stands out to me is Suzuki's own GSX-S1000GT plus, right? That's a, the 1000cc sort of K5 power plant that Suzuki's been putting in lots of bikes over the past few years, and they made a sort of sport touring bike out of it. And it's so good. And that's kind of a modern concept of here's what a sport touring bike can be. Here's what sport touring performance can be. And I think in that way, the Hayabusa is, is long in the tooth. It's, it's yeah, it's, it's it represents something that isn't necessarily top of mind for people, this sort of like ultimate hypersport or whatever you want to call it. And I think that there's at least one more evolution of the Hayabusa that, that could happen and make people happy. But in general, it's still a great bike. Even if it's conceptually long in the tooth, it's a great bike and really fun. And obviously very good at going down a dirt road, which we'll find out here. Let's see here. Let's, let's, let's mess around with the electronics a little bit, user one. Okay. So we can do it here. We can turn off TC. Yeah. Let's try that. And try our traction control. Yeah. I don't know why we'll, we'll give that a try, right? Why not? Okay. Off we go. No traction control. Oh, it's muddy. That was fun initially, but I'm going to take it easy. We're going to take it easy here next to this lake. It still has not dried up. You know, even the suspension and the seat, it's just like surprisingly comfortable doing this. Surprisingly. Would I recommend it? No, surprisingly good. Also just like, just like that, you know, like when it spools up in the dirt, it's just so predictable. It feels like the engine's made for flat track. It's just like, it just works so well. Why does it work so well to do that? It's a gentle giant. I tell you, it was more fun than I thought it was going to be. All right. Let's see if I can change this traction control setting without diving into the menu there. I think you can just, yeah, there we go. So you can just do it right from the dash here, Zach. Come on, man. Okay. Everybody, do we think we can get a wheelie out of the GSXR 1300? Let's just open the throttle and see what happens. A couple of things happen when you do a wheelie on a Hayabusa. One, you feel like you're like eight feet off the ground because it's so long. You just sort of like cantilever yourself up in the air. And also the front of the bike comes up in front of your face and you can't really see where you're going. You gotta, you know, you gotta like peek around the side or something. Have you ever seen a picture of, um, you know, some, uh, someone doing a wheelie on a busa and they're, and they're like throwing a little bit of style into it and going like this to peer around the bike. It's probably because they need to see where they're going. Cause the thing is so tall. Pretty fun wheelie bike though. All you got to do is breathe on the loud stick. Just go and it'll go. Hi-ya. Last test that needs to be run, of course, is can you back it in and we're going to go fourth to first here and we're going to try to, we got a little, we got a little swerve, but you can't adjust the ABS as far as I know. You can correct me from the comments if I'm wrong, but, um, yeah, I didn't see ABS in the settings anywhere and I don't think there's a secret button. So you kind of got to trick the bike. And I believe there's a slipper clutch because it works. The back wheel doesn't hop around or anything, but not great for backing it in, sadly. Uh, still ABS, as always recommended feature on any bike, as far as I'm concerned, especially one with the power of the gods. Hey everybody. Luck of the draw. We got three parking spaces to a U-turn and we might need them all. All right. Boosted baby. First gear, slowed down. We're going to go in this, uh, parking space here. We're going to go full lock left feet up. Uh, is that two and a half, two and a half? I think two and a half parking spaces. It's, um, you get used to it in a parking lot, but it is, um, more so than on a twisty road. Very noticeable, uh, that it's heavy in these situations. Um, and not terribly easy to ride. I had a question, uh, at some point about this bike where someone said, what's the, what's its worst attribute? What's the worst scenario for riding conditions for a Hayabusa? And, um, aside from like, you know, motocross track or dirt or something like that, like city, super low speed stuff, you know, it's fine. It's just like, it's so big. It's a freight train. It wants to be on the, on a straight section of track. It's peppy. Just love that kind of low idle grumble that it does. Sounds great. Good stuff. Okay. Let's answer some Instagram questions. Shall we? Okie doke. First question here is from Colin Fowler, which is not a question at all. Actually, Colin Fowler writes, I've been riding 35 plus years club racing. Also I rode a 2017 Busa. I was not ready. I know there are faster, but dammit, man, those things are intense. I really like this comment because I very much appreciate Colin Fowler raising his hand and saying, uh, Holy crap. That's a lot of motorcycle. And, uh, Colin has, has told us that there's plenty of riding experience in his past. Just it's a lot of motorcycle. And, and I definitely feel that way. Sometimes when I ride it, it's a lot. Sometimes I'm actually impressed that they even sell them to people. Um, but I'm happy to have experienced it. Anyway. Next question is from helmet head Lyle, who writes, do you feel Suzuki should embrace the fate as a spicy sport tour? And with that in mind, offer such a version, much like the super Duke GT and be able to Mount factory color match side cases. Yes, I do. And this is exactly what I was alluding to when I said that there's one more evolution of the Hayabusa that I think would make sense because it has ironically or otherwise developed this reputation as a sport touring bike. And because something like the GSX S 1000 GT plus exists in Suzuki's lineup. I really feel like a Hayabusa GT plus would be so awesome. You wouldn't have to change the silhouette that much, if at all, just like slightly higher bar, slightly lower pegs maybe. And yeah, some, some swoopy, um, color matched hard bags. I know that the, the aftermarket or at least custom designers have made such things for Hayabusa. And would it be a little bit silly? Yeah, but it would, it would just plug you into this engine in a more sort of like sustained and in more of a touring style. And I think it would work. And I think it would be great because that GSX 1000 GT plus is great. And the engine in that bike isn't nearly as good as the engine in this bike. So yeah, I love the idea of that. And, uh, we're talking the same language there. Helmet head I'm picking up what you're putting down. I smell what you're stepping in. Okay. Last question is from jam Bonnie who asks what is its purpose nowadays? It's not the fastest in a straight line. It's not the comfiest. It's definitely isn't the most agile. Um, is this a relic of a bygone era that we've moved past? Does it carve a niche unto itself? We touched on this a little bit in the video, but this does put a finer point on it. It's not the fastest. It's not the that. So, so what is it actually? Right. And I think that the short answer to the question is, yes, it, it carves its own niche. It is its own thing. And that's why it's special. That's the reason it is what it is. It's so kind of unapologetically itself. I mean, the BMW GS always comes to mind the first GS, everyone said, why would you want a dirt bike? That's this heavy? Why would you want a street bike with a 21 inch front wheel? Why would you want this compromise? Why? And of course that turned into the whole adventure bike craze eventually. And people recognize it as something that was useful and good. And I think that maybe while this is not as utilitarian, it does have that thing, right? It might not be the fastest, but it is wicked fast. Are there more comfortable, faster bikes? I don't know that there are, you know, so it kind of, if you combine a couple of those attributes, it starts to take shape as its own thing. And I really love that about it. And it is, it is a charming bike and not just because it's so famous. Okay. Everybody. Thanks so much for hanging out. Stick with me. Let's put the sucker on the daily rider leaderboard. Uh, here we go. Three, two, one. Yeah. All right, everybody. Here we go at RevZilla West with the daily rider leader board. We got the Hayabusa ready to rumble at the top of the 23 leaderboard here is the sibling to the Hayabusa SV650. Uh, and then an all out sport bike and then an electric urban runabout. Is the Hayabusa better than a CBR1000RRR on the, on the commute, on the daily ride? Well, it depends what your daily ride is. It's heavier, which is annoying for like pushing it around the garage and that kind of thing. But in general, yeah, it's better than that bike. Is it better than an SV650? What would you rather have? No, no. What would you rather ride to work every day for a year? Be honest. What would, what would it be? It'd be an SV650. That's what it would be. Pretty reasonable bike to ride around, a gentle giant, if you will, unless you ask it to not be gentle and then it will, um, you know, melt your face, but a pretty fun bike. Uh, I want to take a quick trip down memory lane here to the previous iterations of the leaderboard. Just talk about where we would kind of fall around here. Kawasaki versus 1000. That's a big, uh, you know, quasi ADV touring bike. That would be better than a Hayabusa if I'm being honest. Um, is it as good as a BMW R1250RT police special? No, probably not. Probably not. Probably not. Where would it fall around here? Better than an S1000RR. Probably not as good as a Rebel 500 though. That bike's awfully good. So maybe here on the 22 leaderboard, a Yamaha R7. I'd probably still rather ride an R7 to work. A little less comfortable. I don't know. That's a tough one. Okay. So maybe above the R7, not as good as a Royal Enfield INT650. I don't think, that INT650 is just such a sweetheart of a bike. Easy to ride, easy to use, not expensive, not heavy, as a pretty, pretty good little bike, I think. So the Hayabusa, you know, up high on the 23 leaderboard, but there's not a ton of competition. On these leaderboards, we're, we're down here. We're in the probably 40th percentile of bikes we've ridden on Daily Rider, just to give you a little bit of context. I feel honored to have it on the Daily Rider leaderboard. And I hope that everyone out there in the YouTube land enjoyed that ride to work. So as usual, thanks for sticking around and hope to see you next time. See everybody. Holy smokes, the truck traffic, something exciting going on at the port. Perhaps the new Polly Pocket dolls came in. Why the hell did I say that? You remember Polly Pocket? Wasn't it like a little, it was like a tiny doll, I think. So she fit in your pocket? I don't, I don't know.