Ram Raider

Scoop gets to ride a rather rare 60s twin: Suzuki’s T305

- Steve Cooper

Suzuki’s relationship with two-stroke twins is a long one, beginning circa 1956 with machines such as the Colleda TT and culminating with the sporty RGV250s of the 80s and 90s.

In amongst that sub-division of decades, the company produced a raft of stroker twins the equal of and sometimes better than those of their rivals. This month’s Classic Ride features a bike from Suzuki’s back catalog that rarely gets little if any exposure.

The T305, aka The Raider, is often glossed over simply because it apparently falls between two chairs, or is that three? It’s neither a 250 nor a 350, nor is it even a ‘faux 350’ like the later 315cc T350 Rebel. With just a nominal 65cc of additional capacity over the T20/Super Six/X-6 upon which it’s based, you might quite reasonably ask why Suzuki bothered with such an odd engine capacity. And yet if you look at the early to mid-1960s Japanese motorcycle history you’ll see a consistent theme within the post 250cc category. Both Honda’s CB77 and Yamaha’s YM-1 were 305cc and Kawasaki’s A7 Samurai was 338cc. It’s almost as if the bikes were afterthoughts beyond the original 250s on which they were based. Now grasp that the T305, CB77, YM-1, and A7 were all aimed at the export markets and ask yourself this… did the Japanese factories truly not initially see that both America and European markets had always had a strong 350 market sector? It was either a strangely worrying oversight on behalf of the product planners back then or arguably the major players simply didn’t have the resource or capacity to make 350s. Whatever the reason, perhaps we should be thankful that this blip in Oriental logic happened or we’d not be standing in the New Forest admiring Chris Brealey’s somewhat immaculate T305.