Suzuki Hayabusa

The FZ09 is ugly, the Busa I'd call borderline queer, style-wise...but it's something of the Ferrari of motorcycles in the sense that you see one and you know it's fast. It undoubtedly gets respect among the sportbike crowd, at least and it's not a bad touring bike either. Hard to put an exact simile here, most Ferraris are not as bad-looking for a car as the Busa is for a bike but in no way would I call it a Lotus or Jaguar of motorcyling. But I can think of no car equivalent of borderline-ugly styling, slow handling and outright speed...the ZX-14 is similar, but with better handling and not quite so outrageous styling. And a scraped-up sportbike is kind of par for the course, but a scraped-up Busa is just sad. Sign of a rider clearly in over their head, on a bike that doesn't deserve to be abused & neglected like that." just install different handle bars, footrest and a seat to make the bike more comfortable and controllable, then see how much enjoyment you can get from riding rather than complaining" absolutely it would be a better all-around bike (that can still do 175+ and 10sec quarters) but it's never going to handle like a literbike or even a 14R. That's the yin and yang of it. It's like comparing a Barracuda with modern disc brakes to your average Japanese coupe with a 200hp turbo 4-cylinder engine. The Busa can accelerate and stop with the best of them, you can manhandle it through the turns like a big cat but it just will not, cannot turn with the lighter, smaller bikes. Of course often you don't need it to, but still you'd better keep that in mind before you need it to do that just to stay on the road. Cause it ain't gonna happen.178 hp is pretty passe these days" yeah I've heard this complaint now and then. The kind of logic that has a team kicking a field goal from the 2 yard line when down by 5 with 2 minutes left in the game. Yep, 170hp from the stock engine with 80ft-lb of torque available over 90% of the RPM band, that's "passe" all right. It'll "passe" right by you on your CBR as it struggles to get up to 12k. Oh wait: your bike weighs 100lbs less. So what? It's still slower. Yet you are right in one sense that a bike that can do 10sec quarters is not a whole lot faster than an 11 or 12sec bike w hen it comes down to it, same with 150mph or even 130mph at the top end. And you're right there are a LOT of bikes like that. Heck you might as well just buy a Ninja 300. PS you can change the bars & pegs along with the gearing, the ECU, the exhaust, etc. Its seem like every sport bike has the same complaint (people feel too bunched up on them) now, you are offer a sport touring bike that provides the the ability to stretch out and people complains about it? Why not, instead of installing power adder, just install different handle bars, footrest and a seat to make the bike more comfortable and controllable, then see how much enjoyment you can get from riding rather than complaining. AT 6' 2" 230 it fits me great and I use it for sport touring.The new brakes and ABS are nice but the bike just needs higher bars to really find its own niche going forward. It's just too slow-handling to really be considered a "sportbike", and the bars are way too far forward and low for it to really be a "sport-tourer". Suzuki just needs to bite the bullet, copy the pullback bars on the 14R and market the Busa as a Super-VFR750. What the FJ1200 should be. The current bars just don't make sense unless you seriously intend to buy that bike and ride it 100mph+ on the street. But I like the mirrors. Like 'em more if they weren't so wide end to end. The stability is nice on most roads and the engine delivers nice, smooth linear power in abundance without the big midrange kick of the 14R which is a bit too much. Overall a nice bike with a bit too much emphasis on going 185mph on straight roads. I can't imagine riding that bike over 80mph on the average two-lane as the handling is just so slow, and the bars sheesh I might be able to ride it for an hour once or twice a day even then I'd have to lay on the tank half the time.