Over the weekend, you may have seen reports from Europe about the demise of the Suzuki Hayabusa, as the venerable hyperbike has been rumor to go the way of the dinosaur, especially now that its Euro4 waiver is set to expire at the end of the year.
This has led to quite a bit of chatter about the machine’s future, with many of the headlines that we have seen focusing on the end of the iconic motorcycle’s run, and that production on the bike has ceased. But, what’s the real story?
We know to expect a Suzuki Hayabusa reboot in the coming months, and in a way, that is all that we know. The iconic superbike is in its 20th year of production right now, and an all-new machine is set to take its place, for the 2019 model year.
Will it be turbocharged? Will it have a larger displacement? How about a dual-clutch transmission? That remains to be seen.
Safe bets are that the 2019 Suzuki Hayabusa will have updated electronics, likely powered by an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Euro4 emissions homologation is a must, and Suzuki will presumably be building the new Hayabusa with the Euro5 standard in mind as well.
Beyond these givens though, it seems that every week there is a new rumor regarding the next Hayabusa generation, and this week is no different.
In this installment of “This Week’s Suzuki Hayabusa Rumor,” we again take a look at the motor of this venerable sport bike. The rumor going around the interwebs right now is that the 2019 Suzuki Hayabusa will feature a “semi-automatic” gearbox.
Side-stepping the part where saying a gearbox is semi-automatic is a lot like saying someone is “semi-pregnant” (you either are, or aren’t), the rumor stems from a patent filed by Suzuki that shows a gear-shifting mechanism with the foot-shifter that doesn’t require a clutch.
If this sounds a lot like an up/down quickshifter system, then you score extra bonus points today for being a rational human being, but you would be very wrong about what this whole rumor should actually be about.
This is where reading the patent is actually really useful, because it turns out that this patent has a lot less to do with some sort of new transmission type, as the internet rumors would suggest, and a lot more to do with repackaging the transmission of a motorcycle (or any engine with an integrated gearbox) into a tighter unit, while retaining a standard manual shift mechanism.
A new Suzuki Hayabusa is coming, this much we know. What that bike will be, what features it will have, and what it will look like though have been open to much speculation.
Unsurprisingly then, the rumor mill surrounding the Suzuki Hayabusa continues to churn out ideas about what this hyperbike will be, and today’s latest tidbit of gossip comes courtesy of Italy’s Insella publication.
In it, the Italian journos wager that the Suzuki GSX-1300R will in fact become the GSX-1400R for the 2019 model year, with the venerable Suzuki Hayabusa getting a displacement increase to the tune of 1,440cc for its four-cylinder engine.