Description
Suzuki Katana 1100
As former BMW employees, we were used to developing designs within tight technical and corporate constraints. As an independent design team, we suddenly had the freedom to think differently at Suzuki – and a client who initially had no great expectations of us.
This gave us a unique opportunity to realise our vision of the future of motorcycle design. No marketing department dictating what was possible, and no engineering constraints saying, “That can’t be done.” Instead, we were free to pursue our ideas consistently. The challenge was to solve the technical requirements in a way that never compromised the design – an approach that remains one of our particular strengths to this day.
The result was a motorcycle unlike anything the world had seen before. The Suzuki Katana 1100 became a milestone in motorcycle design and influenced the appearance of motorcycles around the world like few models before or since.
At the presentation in Hamamatsu, Suzuki’s president remarked: “The motorcycle reminds me of a Concorde.” The go-ahead for series production was given.
Suzuki could hardly wait to launch the production model and presented our 1:1 design model at IFMA in Cologne long before production even began.
The Katana became an icon – and a testament to what is possible when design is truly free to think beyond convention.
