NAKED FUN LOCAL LAUNCH TEST SUZUKI GSX-S1000

Naked bikes are all the rage in Europe and many other places in the world. Not so much in South Africa though, if it doesn't have a fairing it simply doesn't feature. So how does a bike like the new Suzuki GSX-S1000 fit in? We took it for an afternoon blast to find out.

- Ferdie Pieterse

Back in the 70s and even the early 80s, standard production bikes were mostly unfaired, i.e. had no fairings and were therefore essentially naked. I remember even before I had my own big bike, getting the opportunity to ride my brother’s Suzuki GS1000G and some of his mate’s bikes as a young 17-year-old which included amongst others a Honda CBX1000 and a Yamaha XS 1.1. Big burly naked bikes they were. Being the norm back then, no one really knew anything else, and it wasn't until bikes like the Suzuki Katana and the Honda CB1100R were produced in the early eighties as standard with fairings, that the bike riding landscape started changing. The real change came about when Suzuki launched the race-replica GSXR750 in 1985. Suddenly every bike manufacturer started producing bikes with full fairings and the Superbike era began mid 80’s onwards.

Soon after, riders started crashing their full-fairing race-replica superbikes, often with no insurance and subsequently couldn’t afford to replace the costly fairings to get the bike back to standard trim. These riders simply stripped off the fairings, added a headlight of sorts and upright handlebars and just like that, naked streetfighters were born.

In the mid-90s though, Triumph revisited the naked bike look and produced the Speed Triple which was essentially a Daytona with the fairings removed and upright handlebars fitted. Suzuki also produced a naked version of the 1200 Bandit a year or two later. Other manufacturers cottoned on to the idea, and before long a whole new market segment was born, which in a strange way, existed unknowingly up to the eighties.