Different Drummers
Different drummers
Peter Egan
LEANINGS
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE 1975 Suzuki RE-5 Rotary?” asked a caller on the phone the other night.
I immediately recognized the voice of my old friend Jim Buck, from Boise, Idaho. Who else, after all, would ask such a question?
Jim is sort of the Will Rogers of motorcycling-he never met an old bike he didn’t like-and he has even less resistance to hopeless, cast-off relics than I do. He owns sheds filled with all kinds of odd and interesting bikes, some of which actually run.
He’ll call me and say, “I just picked up an old CBX at a garage sale yesterday.”
“Does it run?” I’ll ask.
After thoughtful hesitation, “Well...I imagine it would,” Jim will say, “if it had a cylinder head and a back wheel. Also, it could use a little detailing. The pigeon crap from the barn has pretty much eaten up the chrome and paint...”
You get the picture. Jim does own some nice clean classic bikes, but others Need Work. All are equally welcome.
I met Jim way back in the early Eighties, when he called CW from Missoula, Montana, where he lived at the time, and asked why we’d never tested the new Guzzi V-50.
“Can’t get a testbike from the U.S. distributor,” we replied.
“Well, I just bought one,” Jim said. “Why don’t you come up to Missoula and test mine?”
So Managing Editor Steve Kimball and I drove a Chevy Citation (remember those?) borrowed from our sister publication, Road & Track, all the way to Missoula with a truckload of test equipment. Jim turned out to be a great guy and a complete bike nut, and we’ve been friends ever since, calling each other regularly with important news of another completely shot motorcycle discovery.
And now this question out of left field about the Suzuki RE-5 Rotary.
“I wish I could tell you something about that bike,” I said, “but I’ve never ridden one. I never knew anybody who owned one, and the Rotary was out of production when I arrived at Cycle World. All I know is they had a Wankel engine, weird-looking instruments and didn’t sell very well. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, there’s a local guy who’s got one that might be for sale.”
“Does it run?”
“He says it did before he put it away.”
“Amazing,” I said. “But then every old bike I’ve ever owned used to run at one time, according to the owner...”
I told Jim I’d consult my vast file of old motorcycle magazines, read some road tests and get back to him.
So today I dug up a couple of old road tests in CW and Cycle. Both magazines featured the Suzuki RE-5 in 1975 comparison tests of large touring bikes, and CW Senior Editor D. Randy Riggs even did a 3000-mile touring story with the RE-5, looping down through Baja and taking the La Paz ferry across to mainland Mexico.
Unfortunately, no one had many good things to say about the bike. Testers liked its precise handling and engine smoothness at highway speed, but that was about it. The RE-5 was heavy for its class, complex, rough and raspy at idle, not particularly fast, and it got poor fuel mileage-28 to 34 mpg-and had a rather short touring range. It also ran hot, despite its huge radiator, baking the rider in warm weather (Riggs had to deflect the heat with spare faceshields taped to the tank). Fork seals blew out on the first testbike, coating the engine with oil, and the chain lubricator threw oil all over the back of the bike, but missed the chain. Styling was a bit odd, and no one liked the Thermos-bottle-shaped instrument and taillight pods. It seemed to have been a classic case of a set of answers to
a group of questions no one had asked.
But it was a bold move nonetheless. Suzuki, at that time, was known for wellengineered two-strokes that were more durable than some of the other nickelrocket ring-dings of the era. Owners reported long, trouble-free miles out of bikes such as the Titan 500 Twin. Suzuki was also an innovative company, willing to try new, almost eccentric, designs to separate itself from the others. Such as the GT750 “Water Buffalo,” a liquidcooled two-stroke Triple, an engine that soon became the darling of small racecar builders.
By the mid-Seventies, however, two-stroke road bikes were on their way out, thanks to new smog laws and an emphasis on fuel mileage because of the recent gas crisis. Suzuki, rather than imitate Honda and Kawasaki inline-Fours, decided to try something completely different.
You might call the RE-5 Rotary an interim step that really didn’t lead anywhere, preceding the introduction of Suzuki’s own well-respected GS750 and 1000 inline four-stroke Fours. The GS1000 was Suzuki’s flagship when I came to work at CW in 1980.
So I missed the RE-5 era. In those mid-Seventies years when Suzuki was struggling to sell the Rotary, I bought instead a new Norton 850 Interstate. Which I see, incidentally, came in sixth in Cycle’s 1975 eight-bike touring comparison test. Right behind the fifth-place RE-5, but ahead of the Moto-Guzzi 850T Interceptor and the last-place Harley FLH1200. The BMW R90/6 and the Honda Gold Wing tied for first.
So of course I went right out and bought the Norton. I never was very good at taking advice.
And I don’t think Jim is, either.
Even if I pass along all the reported shortcomings of the RE-5, he’ll probably buy the old Rotary anyway. And who could blame him?
What could be more fun than to try an odd and unusual type of motorcycle you’ve never ridden before? Especially one that represents a lost, transitional phase in history. For some of us, it’s almost what collecting old bikes is all about.
Maybe I’ll have to run out to Boise and take a ride next summer, if Jim can get the bike running.
And he probably can. After all, it used to run, before it was put away. Ö
