ROAD TESTS
32 Suzuki VS700GL Intruder
Too genuine to be an imitation.
70 HondaVF1000R
Looking the part is about 100 percent of the game.
100 Suzuki GV1400GDG Cavalcade LX
With a name like this, it's gotta be luxurious.
SHORTS
16 Kawasaki KX125
Zing me up, Greenie, to the trophy room.
FEATURES
18 CARB: Long Tunnel, Faint Light
' A piece of cake''—De Tomaso.
50 Reservoir Road
Once a road, now in pieces. By Paul Gordon
80 Buell: The Other American Maker
You should see what he makes: about 175 mph.
By Kevin Cameron
88 Personal Passageways
Ten favorite routes across this land.
90 Pennsylvania Blues
Get off the turnpike, here, anywhere. By Pete Lyons
91 Armadillos, Anyone?
See the North Texas wildlife. By Kevin Brunson
92 Ah, New England!
More to life than polished camshafts. By Kevin Cameron
93 Natchez Trace Trail
Getting back is more than half of it. By Riley Tharp
93 Where The Hell Is Squamish?
On the edge of the Howe Sound. By John Stein
94 Indiana Waterways
Rivers, streams, roads and canal water. By Riley Tharp
95 California’s 38 Special
Bang, bang, you 're still alive. By Pete Lyons
96 New Mexico Tableau
Painterly, painterly, Sweet Patrick. By Chris Hodenfield
97 Mystery Miles
/ don't know it, but could you hum a few turns? By John Stein
98 Wending Toward Loudon
Going in nope to return in glory. By Kevin Cameron
DEPARTMENTS
8 Editorial/Public Service Announcement/Phil Schilling
13 Letters/Mutual Fools
14 TDC/Super-Fine Drive Feeling/Kevin Cameron
24 Pipeline/Dymag's MHC/Jim Greening
28 Head Or\/Overheard In Traffic School/Paul Gordon
58 Road Test Index
SUZUKI VS700GL INTRUDER
At first look, the Intruder jumps up like a copycat:
Suzuki’s covering version of a Milwaukee original
and the Japanese knockoffs. But this Suzuki is a
cat of a different stripe and color. It looks too good
and works too well to be a programmed Xerox
duplicate. Which leads us to ask a very serious
question—how the heck did that happen?
□ There comes a time when the imita-
tion is so faithful to the original that the
imitation becomes the new
real thing. With the Intruder,
Suzuki has built a Japanese
style-cruiser for riders who
previously wouldn’t have
been caught dead, or
even ill, on a Japa-
nese style-cruiser.
Consider the ethnic
barriers: To their i
detractors, Japanese V-twin cruisers
are plastic, literally, rather than real
steel. Plastic translates to some kind
issue goes beyond matters of
and counterfeiting—
of shorthand abbreviation for counter-
feit; steel is the password for real. Yet
boulevard heroes might resist a Japa-
nese cruiser under the theory that
Real Goat-ropers don’t eat rice.
Somewhere in Japan the message
came through clearly. That some-
where was Hamamatsu at Suzuki
headquarters. Don’t like plastic? Fine;
the Intruder is as metallic as a cast-
iron skillet. Do Japanese names—the
giants of mass-production goods—
across the tank of your ma-
impair your coach-built cus-
image? No problem.
Suzuki engineers have all but
erased the company’s obviously
Japanese name from the Intruder. In
the tank logo, the Suzuki S takes the
form of a double-headed bird with
wings flanking a modest and subdued
"Suzuki,” and the brand name never
once appears on the engine cases.
Style? The Intruder is less a copy of
anything from Milwaukee than some-
thing far more significant: the first real
evidence that the Japanese fully
understand the cruiser idiom, and Ja-
pan’s first complete interpretation of
the American custom-bike idiom. The
Intruder originates from our domestic
American custom-bike culture, and
that’s exactly where Harley-Davidson
goes for styling inspiration.
Suzuki's understanding of the
chopper idiom is more sophisticated
^^^^nd the Intruder more elegant
than its Japanese...