Ollie's ODDJOBS
Whoop! Whoop! Says Ollie, as he too is converted to a Suzi cruiser…
Idon’t really like big motorcycles. The biggest I’ve owned was a BMW R100/7, and that was only really any use for belting up and down motorways. Beyond that, I like them small and nimble. Like myself (ahem). Then on one of my regular visits to Andy and Mark at Somerset Classics I was introduced to this.
It’s a Suzuki Madura, a 1200cc V4 factory custom. Suzuki had apparently decided in the early 1980s that they needed a competitor to Honda’s Magna and Yamaha’s V-max. This was the result. You have to wonder what drugs the Suzuki designers were on when they dreamed it up. Andy suggested that they were the same geniuses that had come up with the RE-5 rotary and had then been locked in a cupboard for ten years where they set to work trying to come up with something even sillier.
They created a brand new 84-degree V4, which made no sense back then and makes even less sense
now. It had double overhead camshafts with hydraulically set valve adjustment, using oil pressure from the engine. The heads had four valves per cylinder with Suzuki’s Twin Swirl Combustion Chambers, the kind they used on their GSX fours. I don’t know what it really means but it sounds good. The Madura used one-off carbs, because everything was positioned at the wrong height and angles to feed them from the petrol tank. The barrels used wet liners with the outers cast into the crankcase, so most of the top end that’s visible is cylinder head. There’s a hydraulic clutch, too. Having spent a fortune developing the V4, Suzuki couldn’t put it into production straight away because a dispute over US import tariffs wouldn’t allow it to be sold until 1985.
The seat and sissy bar are a work of art. Possibly by Salvador Dali. The wheels have 60 spokes, which are oval and etched (on purpose). The handlebars are huge and are pulled back far more than you might expect to find on a machine knocking out 116bhp. At around a third of a tonne with a rider on board, the brake calipers, which look suspiciously like those fitted to a GS750, appear hopelessly inadequate for the task of bringing you to a halt. For a top of the range mega-cruiser, it’s surprising to find the air forks are just 41mm tubes with springs and air and oil in them. My Husqvarna 401 has 41mm forks.
The Suzuki has a shaft drive, and a fullfloater monoshock which makes the back end look weird. Some of the tubes making up the frame cradle are hexagonal. There’s a veritable Christmas display of idiot lights and gauges to attract your attention. The threegallon petrol tank would be hard pushed to take you further than 100 miles without a refill, which isn’t much cop for a longdistance mount. It has a four into two into four exhaust system.
‘Would you like to ride it?’ said Andy.
‘Of course I would,’ I lied, more than a little intimidated.
‘Watch out for the torque,’ warned Mark, revealing that on a road test he’d given it a little too much throttle and wheelied it. ‘The headlight was looking at the sky.’
Once in the saddle, my first impression was how low the thing is. It’s surprisingly easy to paddle it about, too. Fire it up and it snarls away, then engage first and slip the clutch and off we go. There’s another surprise. The forward-set footrests are in exactly the right place for comfort and control. I got it into second, then third, opened the throttle at 1500 rpm and the world went backwards.
‘Good lord, what’s happening?’ I thought, calmly.
It had shot off like a rocket, pinning me into the back of that ridiculous seat. For the first
time in years, I found myself whooping with delight at the experience of riding a motorbike. It’s incredible, a real traffic light dragster, ready to pound any opposition into the dirt. And it stops too, to my surprise. Turning it round in the road was surprisingly easy, with the aid of that remarkable clutch. I’d ridden a Suzuki GS550L factory custom half its size beforehand, and the Madura was easier to move about, more comfortable and had a better riding position.
Handling was remarkable, even on winter’s grubby roads, though to be fair I wouldn’t want to ride it round our crowded cities, much, or round narrow country lanes, not least because of the difficulty in extricating it from a hedge had I come across an unexpected tractor.
More throttle, more of that back wheel punching me forward, more whooping. Maybe I was wrong about really big bikes, after all. A few more miles and I semi-seriously started to think about how reasonable the £3000 price tag was for so much motorcycle. I mean, yes, spares would be a pain, but rumour has it those motors will easily top 100,000 miles without needing attention. A lot of the remaining Maduras have barely covered a tenth of that. And I could go anywhere on it. Istanbul by Friday was entirely possible (with lots of fuel stops, obviously).
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I realised I’d have to sell two bikes just to fit the thing in the shed, and I’d have to move it out of the way every time I needed to get at anything. By the time I got it back to the shop, I’d calmed down a little and my wallet remained firmly closed… with, it must be said, a little sadness.
Suzuki only made 5099 Maduras and it was only in production for two years. They didn’t give up entirely, as the engine was punched out by 200cc to create the 1400 Cavalcade. That was the biggest bike of its day, 120kg heavier than the Madura and would have beaten everything else in Top Trumps. At least one RC reader has one (and you can read about it elsewhere this issue, which is either kismet or an exceptionally splendid editorial arrangement). We can only assume that Suzuki’s design brief was ‘OK, the 1200 didn’t sell. Let’s build something even bigger to take on the Gold Wing instead.’ They sold nearly twice as many Cavalcades as they did Maduras.
Meanwhile Suzuki decided a V-twin was a better way to go for a cruiser and made the cheaper VS1400 Intruder instead. Which in retrospect seems like a bit of a shame, especially as you can still buy a new V-max…
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