RIDING IMPRESSION RIDING THE RE-5
hen I first spied the RE-5 at the Riding Into History event a few years back, and then got the OK from owner Todd Haifley to actually ride the thing that weekend, I remember being pretty excited. I mean, for all the cool vintage bikes I’ve owned, ridden and raced over the years, I’d never ridden a rotary — so this would be a first. Climbing aboard I expected GS750/GS1000-type ergos (I have a couple late-’70s GS1000s), but the bike’s high, pullback bar funkified that feeling, and the pegs felt a bit more forward they needed to be. This thing debuted before the GS, so I guess that could be expected. But if the riding position felt a little far removed from the everyman GS, pushing the starter button and absorbing the engine’s staccato burble through my ears and butt put the rotary somewhere between Neptune and Pluto. Clicking into gear and pulling out onto the country roads surrounding St. Augustine, Fla.’s World Golf Village felt pretty normal, but again, as soon as I opened things up and rowed through the gearbox a few times, the engine’s strangeness dominated the proceedings. There was no power curve to speak of, really…just linear oomph from low to higher revs, which is a fine concept if the bike you’re riding has decent power. Alas, RE-5 didn’t, and doesn’t, so it felt like a dog. A smooth-running dog, but a dog nonetheless. If you’ve only got 50-some rear wheel horsepower to deal with, especially on a 600-pound streetbike, it’s best to have a bit of peakiness to keep things at least semi-interesting. The RE-5 handled like most mid-’70s streetbikes; workable, but with peculiar steering, wooden brakes and less-than-optimum suspension damping. Still, none of those mediocre characteristics are what kept the bike from being the sales and technical tour-de-force Suzuki was hoping for. The complexity and aesthetic weirdness of that engine was just too much to overcome. Fortunately, Suzuki had the legendary GS line percolating in another room in its R&D facility, and we all know how that turned out. —Mitch Boehm
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AMERICAN MOTORCYCLIST • JANUARY 2023
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, it’s not hard to see why. Initially priced at about $2,500, the RE-5 was more expensive than many full-sized machines. At 617 pounds with a half-full tank, it was heavy, too. It generated mileage figures in the high 20s and low 30s. And with a top speed of just over 100 mph, and a quarter-mile time of 14 seconds, it was neither fast nor quick. But it was more than numbers that killed the RE-5. We’ve already mentioned rising fuel prices, which exacerbated the rotary’s thirsty manners. But to a larger audience there were also the factors of complexity, mystery and aesthetics, all of which joined forces with the lackluster numbers to drive the bike to an early death — and create a major sales disaster for Suzuki. “All the classic bikes in our sport have engines that are emotive or beautiful in some way,” said Yamaha’s Burke, “and the RE-5, as well engineered and dynamically competent as it was, had an uninspiringlooking engine. Not Suzuki’s fault; all rotaries are ugly, I think. But aesthetics matter! I was actually surprised Suzuki went ahead with it given the environment and the not-perfect reputation the rotary engine had at the time.” Comedian Jay Leno, a collector extraordinaire and owner of a low-mile, first-gen RE-5 much like the one we photographed