2024 Suzuki GSX-8R - First Ride and Review!

You know, some of you younger viewers might not realize that it's not every day there's a brand new Suzuki out there on showroom floors, but that's exactly what we have here in front of us with the new, all-new Suzuki GSX-8R, the Gixerator, the not-so-supersport, the half-liter bike. Well, it's a 776. Anyways, this motorcycle is really interesting. This is Suzuki's new play for that new, hotly contested, middle-ish weight sport bike that's not so sporty. Think about the R7, the RS660, the ZX4, the new Daytona 660. That class is jam-packed, man. And this is Suzuki's take with their new Parallel Twin, their new frame, and in this beautiful Pearl Ignite Yellow. Today is the full first ride and review, complete detailed first ride and review of this machine right here. I am super excited to jump aboard. We have a lot to discuss with this bike, but the first thing I want to tell you is that it's a giveaway bike over on yammynoob.co. I bought this thing with my own hard-earned money. Hit that link down below to yammynoob.co and you can get the best chance to win by becoming a member. Start racking up your automatic entries, get access to our exclusive content on our newsletter, our Discord server, get discounts on the store, and get discounts on your Twisted Road rentals as well. If you don't want to join up that way, you can always get a hat, a hoodie, a t-shirt, whatever you like. Every dollar you spend will be a multiplied entry to win, depending on how we're feeling over on the store. So go and check out the link below, support the show. Now, without further ado, let's get into this review of the GSX-8R, the Gixerator. All right, before we swing a leg over this bike, let's run over super basic specs. What is it? It is a steel tubular frame motorcycle, no cool aluminum, you know, twin spar, super spar frame, 776 cc, 270-degree crank, parallel twin motor, making 81 horsepower and 57 foot-pounds of torques at about 8,500 RPM, with a max RPM of about 9,500. Pretty sporty-looking thing, isn't it? But you'll notice the ergonomics package is relatively easygoing. Look how high up these bars are. We have this cool little clip-on style bar that attaches directly to the triple tree right here. No direct clip-ons all the way down here. And if this motorcycle looks a little familiar based on those specs, that's because it is largely based on the Suzuki GSX-8S naked bike. But there have been several changes to this thing to make it a little bit more sporty. And I think it is pretty, pretty damn sporty, I'm not going to lie. Swinging a leg over the Gixerator, the machine is relatively substantial at 452 pounds, wet and ready to ride. That is quite a bit more portly than the Aprilia RS660 or the R7 you will notice, by about 50 pounds. So a little bit on the porky side. You do get a bigger motor, but it's a little bit porky. Seat height is a 31.9 inches claimed, if I remember correctly, and this motorcycle's MSRP is 9,300 bucks or 9,500 bucks. I cannot remember because after a certain point, my specs start to get all muddled together. Let's go ahead and start it up, shall we? A little 270-degree crank comes to life. Some cool things we're going to talk about with this engine. Let's get a quick sound check. Bike is already warmed up. Now, if you're telling me, yeah, that sounds a lot like an MT-07, I'm going to say yes. That's because it's very similar. It's a parallel twin with a 270 crank. Everybody's doing it, and this is Suzuki's take. So it is what it is, folks. All right, let us away on the Suzuki. One cool thing I wanted to point out that's related to this motor, check this out. Suzuki has the low RPM assist. If I got the clutch pulled in all the way, no hand on the throttle over here, watch the revs. They increase, decrease, increase. So if you're a newer rider and you're picking up a jixerator, which is what I'm calling it apparently, that's going to help you out. Let's get it going. Don't know why I did a freaking race start with it, but that is what it is. So the not so super sports category, as I'm calling it. Man, there's a lot of bikes in this class. And honestly, they all do things a little bit different, which is kind of cool. So we're no longer completely identical, 600 class bikes. Let's get a little pull in second. Quick shift up, up to about 90 miles an hour there. And you'll notice that I'm not using the quick shift down. There's a very particular reason for that. And it is that it's not very good. I've been riding this bike around today and the quick shift down just simply is not very conducive to the down quick shift. So you'll notice that I grabbed my gears myself. So 776 cc parallel twin motor on this bad boy with a 270 degree crank. It features a very interesting Suzuki innovation. They call it the cross balancing shaft. What that is, is basically an additional counterweight sort of like in front of and underneath the traditional counter-rotating crank weight, excuse me, that is on a 270 degree parallel twin. With the 270 degree parallel twin, you can often get some nasty vibrations by way of the fact that the pistons are slightly offset 90 degrees, blah, blah, blah. Not the scope of this video. Maybe in another one, we will talk about it. But yeah, this motor promises to be a little bit more vibration free, a little bit more easy going. Is that the case cruising into fifth gear? I mean, it is very smooth for a parallel twin. I do notice, I would say a slight less vibration than an MC07 or something of that ilk. The biggest thing about the GSX-8R's presence on the road is the fact that it's fully faired. So we used to do this thing back in the day where we took real sport bikes, your R6s, your GSX 600s, GSXR 600s, all those sort of things, turn them into naked bikes. We take all the fairings off, put handlebars on and go to town. Now that presents a few challenges. Number one, you still have a peaky bad engine to play with. You have a super rigid frame, you have stiff suspension. And although you made the ergonomics a little bit better, it's still kind of a crappy road bike. So what we do nowadays, apparently, according to five different manufacturers at this point, is you take a naked bike platform like the GSX-8S, like the Yamaha MT-07, like the Trident 660, and you turn them into sport bikes. So all these new age, not so super sport motorcycles have their counterparts in the fully faired category. And so you get these bikes that, you know, they're much more comfortable. They have pokey, punchy, parallel twin engines, and they are promising a really fun ride. And I got to say, the GSX-8R, it is a fun ride. So we have a couple different drive modes and TC modes. That's about it with this thing. It's pretty bare bones. You see, I have over here on the dash, TC set to two, you can do off one, two, and three. That's a varying degrees of traction control intervention, no six axis IMU on this thing. Nothing super advanced, just a pretty simple, probably ignition cut style TC system that's just going to intervene when it sees probably that rear wheel speed is increasing relative to front wheel or something of that nature. It's a pretty rudimentary system. Your drive mode selectors, you see that SDMS is Suzuki drive mode selector. You have A for active, B for basic, and C for comfort. Now, what's interesting about Suzuki's drive mode selection system is that it does not curtail the absolute overall power output. So in every one of these modes, A, B, or C, you're getting full power. What it does is it changes the mapping of how the throttle opens relative to engine powers. And all that it really does is that it means that it just feels punchier, right? Like you open the throttle a little less and you get a little more, right? Super simple to interact with over here on the left-hand cluster. All you got to do is just press mode. It highlights the one you want. And as long as the throttle is not open, you can change it. Like I just changed A to B, super simple. I really wish more motorcycles were like this because it's just so much easier to do. I don't want to be diving through endless menus and jogging a wheel and doing this and that. I'm riding a motorcycle for a basic experience, and I really appreciate the fact that this Suzuki is a simple, bare-bones experience, right? Now, on-off throttle, let's talk about some control inputs here. On-off throttle on this machine obviously can be tailored with how you want it with the drive mode selection system. I have found that A mode, despite being the most aggressive, is the one that I prefer the most. Why is that? I just feel like it's more immediate, more punchy. And you'll see in this setting right here, I can just get around this guy very easily, crank up to fourth gear, maybe make the pass on this car right over here, and we coast in on those brakes. Nissan radial brakes up at the front, pinching two calibers, which is quite nice. And you'll notice that as I breeze on the brakes here, I got a nice amount of stopping power. And we really like that on these motorcycles because we want to stop on our bikes, right? So it has the kind of cheapo square-looking master cylinder, but I have really nice stopping power on this bike. And I really feel like I can really progressively brake as I need to on this machine. And it's working really well for me, avoiding some of these tar snakes, taking an inside line here, dicing between it, watching for that car, making ourselves known with our body, going back into the corner, and look at me going these twisties with the little Gixxerator. Feeling the rear squirm a little bit, grabbing a gear down. The Suzuki really enjoys being one gear higher than you would be on a traditional sport bike, which is kind of interesting, you know? Like, I find that being in fourth or fifth gear even works pretty damn well for, you know, Austin kind of twisty roads. And this one, it has a lot of tar snakes. You got to really watch where you're going. And this bike comes equipped with OEM-level Dunlops, which is something I desperately want to change because I'm not super fond of this tire. I would love to get something like a Michelin Pilot Road 6 or a high-tier sport touring tire because this bike, despite its kind of nasty looks and its little nostril face and its Gixxerator performance looks, it's a really nice, friendly motorcycle, which is not what you'd expect looking at it, which is actually super cool. You know, you get this fully-faired bike that has this kind of aggressive attitude about it, but man, I mean, honestly, the ergonomics package here is similar to Ninja 400 or a, you know, Ninja 650, those sort of bikes. It's, like, really enjoyable to use. No foot down, baby. You'll love to see it. Now, I did mention the quick shift down does not work at all. Well, it's not that it doesn't work at all. It works super poorly. Atrocious quick shift down on this motorcycle. Really not very enjoyable to use. I find myself grabbing a gear myself anyways. I just use the clutch because it really is just so bad. Let's see if we can get around this gentleman right here into this area. There we go. I just love this set of corners and I want to see how the Gixxer feels, and I don't get a ton of confidence from these OEM Dunlops, but I really feel like if I just swapped the rubber, this thing would work great. Now, one thing that's really cool. Let's see if this guy's all right. Y'all good? Yeah, so I'm not going to blame the handling on the Gixxer. I really think these OEM Dunlops are just really not what's going to work for me. Oh, man, this thing is super fun to use. It's got lots of grunt in the middle. It's like there's really no point in revving it out, actually, which is super cool because you get to mess around with the gearbox a ton, feel like you're doing a lot of work, and for a street bike, I really like that. I like the fact that I can, you know, hustle it around and goof around with it a little bit. That's really, really enjoyable. Now, at $95-ish, $100 MSRP. All right, check out this downshift here. Ah, the gearbox for the down. It resists so much. You have to push it so hard, and it just does not feel good. Okay, value for money, right? How does this bike feel when you compare it to the competition? Sort of your 700-900 cc-ish bike. I think it's tough because this thing is fully faired. It has the Suzuki look, and for a lot of people, that is a big deal. This motorcycle actually is selling super well in the UK, apparently, and Suzuki actually thinks that this bike will outsell the V-Strom and the GSX-8S, which I find really tough to believe because everybody online tells me that ADV bikes are the only thing that's selling on dealership floors, but I'm telling you guys, you give them a pretty looking motorcycle, and they just might buy it. They just might buy it, but $9,500, it's a bit tough to swallow given that this doesn't have a whole lot of features, right? At $9,500 MSRP, you're really banging on the door of an MT-09, for example, which is a whole lot more motorcycle than this thing. Street triple, I mean, you're really talking some rarefied air when you're getting close to the $10,000 mark MSRP. I think even the Daytona 660, while I haven't had a chance to sample it yet, it is a smaller engine than this thing, but it makes more top-end power. It features an additional cylinder, has a little bit more tech and features, can definitely give it a run for its money. I think when you compare it to a Yamaha R7, you get a whole lot more motor, you get quick shift up and down, you get quite a bit of bike when you compare it to those. A Prolia RS660, that thing MSRP is like $11,000, but obviously, man, you get a whole lot of bang for buck, and so it's a little tough to place this thing in the marketplace. I think that this motorcycle obviously feels really well in a vacuum, but of course, it's competing against so, so, so many bikes. Let's get a little acceleration, shall we? Let's see from zero. Yeah, nobody's home after 7,000 RPM. The bike doesn't mind it. It works pretty well doing those sort of things, but it's not super happy with it. It feels like I should shift at 7,000 and just call it a day, but it'll happily rev to close to 10,000. Is it the fastest thing in the world? No, but I got to use the gearbox, man. I got to go through four different gears. That's pretty sweet. On an R1, I get to go one gear, and then I'm doing 90, and that's just not very fun, is it? That's the formula that the GSX-8R is pining for here. It's fun. It's approachable fun. It's a bike that feels really nice to ride. It's super comfortable, and I find that this motorcycle picks itself up off a corner really nicely. One thing that I really, really like about it is that it can very, very easily pick up off the corner, and I really, really appreciate that. Despite having a bit of a longer wheelbase than a lot of the bikes in the category, this motorcycle feels like it darts around pretty deftly for its size. I find that it can carve into a corner really nicely, really predictably, and I think that's down to the fact that you get a lot of leverage through these clip-ons or handlebars. I don't know what the hell you want to call these things. They're bolted to the triple tree here, which is a bit silly. They should have brought them underneath for that kind of more elegant look. I would have really preferred the clip-on risers that come off the fork all the way up to here. That would have looked a lot better than this. I don't love the way this looks. Let's talk while we're talking about handling some of the changes Suzuki made to this motorcycle to get it to handle a little bit better than its naked bike counterpart. This motorcycle features the Showa Big Piston Single Function Fork. That's the larger unit over the GSX-8S naked bike, 30% larger in diameter, 30% stiffer, if I remember correctly, as well, and it actually provides a little bit more of that sporty feeling at the front. Like I said, I have no complaints about the front end. For a stock motorcycle that is for street duty, that I cannot adjust, I'm really happy with it, honestly. I find that it doesn't dive, it doesn't wallow, it doesn't blow through its suspension. It seems to do exactly what it needs to do. You know, I can trail those brakes and control the travel of the fork with my brake input really, really nicely, allow the tire to get loaded, and for a street bike and street pace, feels awesome. Really, really enjoyable. The rear is a preload adjustable unit that's straight from the Suzuki GSX-8S naked bike, as well. Nothing different there. You get this nice TFT dash, very legible. I'm super glad that they did the white on black, that's super easy to read, looks classy, night mode-esque. Really, really nice to use. It's not the biggest in the category, I don't think, but I think it's definitely a plus over, for example, like the Daytona 660. I believe they're using that little mixed color TFT display thing. The Aprilia RS660 has a nice unit, but God, I hate Aprilia's interface and TFT, that all just sucks. And then the Yautja R7 just has like the inverted LCD dash, which is really not particularly good. We're going to peel off in here to the right and assess the GSX-8R's slow speed manner, shall we? This motorcycle is designed to be used in traffic as a motorcycle would, so as we slow it all the way down here, don't put our feet down. See how that feels? It controls its weight really nicely, even when you're doing little semi-awkward slow speed turns like that. If you're coming in and you're like, oh, I got to bank a super tight U-turn. Yeah, like it'll totally do it. And because you have these slightly larger clip-ons here, they're just really wide. You get a lot of leverage on this thing. To be honest, there's times I'm riding it and I feel like I'm on a naked bike because my hands are so wide. I really like it actually. It reminds me actually of our Ninja 400 race bike. We had clip-ons that were wide and all the way out to here. And I think this faster cylinder feels so nice and the bars are so wide. I actually find myself mid-corner on these twisties. I'm like, oh, am I back in the saddle of our endurance bike? Do I just want to go and have some fun with it? One thing I wanted to test, haven't done this yet, we'll see how this goes, is the wheelies on this bike. How does it do popping a little wooly? I'm going to try second gear because this thing's got a good amount of torque. I'll go ahead and turn TC off. There we go. Probably won't do anything to prevent the wooly action. Let's go first gear. Yeah, it picks it right up. Okay. Yeah, buddy. Okay. It'll do it. No problem. Sweet. That's fun. That feels a lot like an MT-07, the way that it picks it up and kind of lets you float it a little bit. I do feel that wheelbase a little bit. It's a long bike. I am not a wheelie master, by the way. I just like to pop little wheelies like that. You guys know me. I'm no jigsaw, bro. I'm not sitting there just like, yeah. I wish. That'd be fun. Let's see if it'll let me lock up the rear. No. ABS kicks on. I think the only way to disable that is by pulling the fuse. I don't think there's any kind of supermoto mode or anything like that. The dash is super easy to get into all the other stuff, by the way. You just press and hold the up button for two seconds, and then you can go into info and settings and all that stuff. Just use that mode button. You can change super basic system on this. You can't really do a whole lot here. Exit that. You can change the ride here. RPM, quickshifter, setting. Mode is on or off. That's all you get. It's a Suzuki, folks. It would be nice if you could dial in the quickshifter setting. I love the upshift on this thing. It feels amazing. It's just super snappy, super crisp. Some systems allow you to change how it works because the way a quickshifter works is it slips the ignition and allows the gear to go in. It just cuts ignition for a split second and allows you to blip it up. An auto blipper down is totally different. It has to rev match and wait for the signal. It's all kinds of different. The downshift is atrocious on this thing. Let me see if I can show you guys really quick. You take off here. I'll click it up into fourth. I'll be on the brakes, reducing the load. It's super clunky, really clunky. Honestly, it's pretty bad on twin-cylinder motorcycles because I just find that with a multi-cylinder bike, they just seem to be a little bit more smoother on the downshifts. I just find that a big engine like this with a fewer cylinders has a lot of engine braking, a lot of inertia on the crank. I don't know why. It just feels terrible doing those downshifts. If you do get a Suzuki GSX-8R, you're going to have to just use the clutch for the downshifts because that's what I would do. It's so bad, so, so, so bad. Happy as a clam doing the tight stuff though. Sure. Yeah. All right. Chase it out a little bit. Oh, GX-erator. Kind of interesting. You can tell it's a naked bike engine. You pull away from a stop like that, you just want to shift at 6,000 RPM, and it's just right in the meat of that power band. It's just like, blah, blah, blah. It's got lots of mid-range grunt, tons of low-end grunt too. Like I said, ultimately, you just want to ride this thing one gear higher than you normally would. It's really not bad to do that. Let me see if I can turn TC back on the fly. There we go. Look at that. TC2 back on. Hit our turn indicator. Turn right here. So easy on the GX-er. I totally understand why Suzuki's cross-platform this thing. This engine would be awesome in an adventure bike, in a naked bike. And in a sport bike like this, you just have to understand that it's a cross-platform motorcycle. It's never going to feel like a GSX-R 750. It's never going to feel like a pocket rocket. It's designed much more as a all-day comfortable, all-day touring kind of bike. And that's actually something I really want to do with it is see how it'll do in a longer ride, maybe get this thing to be a little bit more touring comfortable. You guys will see in our shop video, but this motorcycle's rear pillion seat actually has two little hoops on it, and I think that's for luggage. That's pretty cool. And then if we just get some cruise control on this thing and we get it to be a little bit more comfortable, maybe from the seat, I think it could be a big winner, honestly. It could be a big winner. Oh, look at that view, folks. Just a beautiful way to end the ride, huh? All right, folks. The Suzuki GSX-8R. What do I make of it? Honestly, man, it is way more interesting and enjoyable than I thought it would be. It's got a lot of pizzazz from the looks department, don't you think? I think it looks pretty cool. I really do. It's growing on me a lot. I think despite it looking super aggressive and insectoid, this is a friendly, approachable, fun sport bike, and that is more of what we need in today's world. I know it's hard to swallow, but to be honest, we don't need any more 240 horsepower liter bikes. What we do need are turbo high boosts and GSX-8Rs, one right next to each other in the stable. So you get your fun bop around bike, and then you get your intercontinental ballistic missile. Guys, this bike is really interesting. The other thing I think about it, too, is the fact that it's not quite like an R7. It's actually very different. Ergonomically, it's very different. It's not pointy on its nose like an R7. It's super laid back, super comfortable. It's actually so similar to bikes from the early 2000s, like a VFR or something like that. They used to make bikes like this, and I think we went 20 years without really seeing stuff like this, but the new not-so-supersport, I think it's actually pretty sweet. Yeah, I mean, I could get along with it. Is it enough for me for like a hardcore track day junkie kind of guy? Certainly not. I would certainly want something on the street with just a little bit more energy and pizzazz. The parallel twin is a little pedestrian. The quick shifter down is really not so great, and it is a little basic. For the price, I would expect to see something a little bit more. Again, this is punching really close to an MT-09. You know, those kind of motorcycles, you start to get into trouble once you're comparing your 776cc parallel twin to Yamaha's almighty MT-09, but I think the Suzuki's got a lot going for it. I'm super excited to get this bike for way more miles, do some big long tests on it. We are certainly going to modify it. We have an exhaust already ordered for it, new tires. I want to get the cruise control fitted to it, maybe the heated grips, although, to be honest, it is warming up here in Texas, so I will probably not do heated grips. A more comfortable seat and a tail tidy. Get this thing, you know, spec'd out really nice for whoever's going to win it because, again, it's a giveaway bike over on yammynoob.co. Make sure you get entered to win by clicking the link down below on yammynoob.co. Become a member, sign up, get access to all the cool stuff we're doing, all the giveaway entries, and then you'll be locked and loaded to win. Guys, thanks so much for checking out today's video. Bit of a longer one. Hope you enjoyed it. I'll catch you in the next one. See you later. Keep watching Yammy Noob!