Suzuki GSX-8TT & GSX-8T Review | Fast...BUT

You may have fallen in love with the looks of either of these bikes, but the question is, is it really the bike for you? In this video, we're going to answer who this bike is for and why it might not be for you as well. Now, we took both of these bikes out on our usual test route and we were instantly surprised by how fast they are. Even on paper, they're not blindingly quick. It's not loads of horsepower, but they do feel quick, especially because you've got a quick shift as well. You can pin the throttle, go up through the gears. It is fast. You don't really need any more power than this in the real world. That's not really something you'd expect to say when you're talking about a retro motorcycle. This is the Suzuki GSX-8TT, which Suzuki mark it as a retro. Then you've got the GSX-8T, 1T, but it's essentially exactly the same bike. I wasn't sure whether there'd be more differences than there are between these two, but in terms of the way they ride, let's get into them. Now, out of the two bikes, I prefer, we both prefer the looks of this one in the black paint scheme. This is slightly more retro styled. You've got the fairing up front here and the stripes on the tank and a bit more blacked out looks here and there. In our world, this isn't what we would call a retro bike. For us, a retro bike would be something more of a modern classic design with a proper cradle chassis, maybe air cooling fins and that sort of thing. It's loosely retro, I'd say, with the styling, but not proper retro. When we say retro, when Suzuki say retro, it's more based on the 70s style Japanese bikes, maybe 80s rather than 50s, 60s and that sort of style. We'll come on to the styling a bit later in the video. I think it's important we start off with the performance of these bikes. Now, they both are, well, the same performance, same engine, et cetera. It's all calibrated the same. They are quick bikes in my eyes. You've got three different modes, A, B, and C. A meaning you get all the power. C is a bit more dialed down. B is somewhere in between. It accelerates quickly. You've got quick shifter. You can go very fast. You're up to 70 miles an hour in no time. Any more power than this, you'll start finding that you get more and more speeding tickets. It's a little bit jolty off the line. It wants to just go. I found that around town, it's maybe not the best bike. It doesn't really like being at low RPMs. It almost feels like it's going like that, like, come on, let me go. It's like a thoroughbred horse waiting to be unleashed. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a great city bike. I think it's got too much power for that. It's more of a back lane, not so back lane as in single track lanes, but a B road blast sort of bike. It's the kind of bike you take out on the weekend, on a sunny day with your friends, go for a pretty swift ride, but not a mental ride, getting your knee down, scraping the pegs everywhere you go. It's sort of in between motorcycle. Now, if you want spec sheet reviews where we tell you all the specs, the geometry, the figures of a motorcycle, this is not the channel for you. If you care about how a bike actually feels in the real world, then make sure you subscribe because that is what we do on this channel. The engine in both of these bikes is a 776cc parallel twin with a 270-degree crank. It produces 82.9 PS at 8,500 RPM and 78 Nm of torque at 6,800 RPM. As I said earlier, it's a little bit, in my eyes, it's quite a revvy engine. The power is up in the higher RPMs. Lower down in the town, it does feel like it hasn't got that low down grunt. You'll probably hear a different thing from a different perspective because I'm used to bikes, if you say low down torque, I've been thinking of Harley Davidson where it's like all the meat from 2,000 RPM. This hasn't got that. It's got much more of a sports bike naked feel, but it's not mental. Part one, if you like, of who it's for is definitely for somebody who wants a quick bike. It accelerates, like Darcy said, very well. It corners very well and it's sharp handling, sporty bike, but it's not so sharp and sporty as a full-on super bike. The pegs will scrape before you'll get your knee onto the ground if that's what you want to do. If that is what you want to do, you're halfway there, this is the bike for you. It's not a bike for trundling around the town or the country lanes, stopping off here and there and riding slowly. You've got to want to go fast and it will go flipping fast. Looks-wise, again, a lot of people think this is the best thing since sliced bread in terms of looks. It's not our cup of tea, to be honest. We do prefer the more classic lines of a modern classic than this sort of style, but that's what you'll gain out of this video by listening to what we say who are not normally the sort of people that ride these sort of bikes. You may get a different perspective that is quite useful because when people are seeing things through rose-tinted spectacles, they may not notice things that we would notice. Back to the looks and the style. I'm not going to critique the style in great detail because for what I see as a motorcycle, what it should look like is very different from what these motorbikes look like. We're not going to get anywhere by being super critical, but Suzuki do say on their website that these are both retro bikes. When we look at them, we see very modern bikes. I don't really see anything retro, not even in terms of sporty bikes from the 70s or 80s, personally. Where they get that from, I'm not quite sure. There's design cues in there, but not very strongly, I would say. There's a lot going on with this bike. There's a lot of things in the engine here. There's a lot of pipe work. There's lots of these shiny bits here and there. It's kind of a busy-looking motorcycle. You do have this line that comes up like that, not as severely as on some sporty bikes, which aesthetically I think looks wrong, but you see it on a lot of bikes these days. I'm not going to say any more about the styling than that, other than that you do have this mudguard. It's not really a mudguard. It's an extender where you put the number plate on, which is on every flipping bike nowadays as well, which looks like an afterthought. I say, if you took it off, it'd look nicer, but then you've got this massive gap. If you put your number plate there, it's illegal. What can you do? It would be better really to design a proper mudguard. Now, to the last thing, mudguards. The front mudguard is tiny, only comes to there. We've just been riding on some wet, wintry roads. There's a lot of muck on the engine, right up into the radiator here. Without doing anything serious, these bikes are going to need a damn good clean. I don't understand, personally, why don't even sports bikes have proper mudguards. They used to have in the 70s. You look at them. This trend for small mudguards is very stupid really, because it means that you go out anywhere, you arrive with a filthy looking motorbike that's not shiny anymore. It's not very cool to show off a dirty bike when you get to a bike meet or something. In terms of the comfort of this bike, I'm six foot one. This is what I look like on the bike. The riding position isn't too bad. I thought it was going to feel a bit sportier of a riding position than this. It's just right, actually, for this kind of bike. It's not too leant over. It is a bit for my liking, but as far as naked sports bikes go, it's reasonably comfortable. To be honest, it doesn't feel big. It feels like a reasonably small bike for someone of my height. Now, I can see why a lot of people think this bike is cool. It's well built and it does everything it says on the tin, but when I'm sat on it, it feels more like a tool than a jewel. My head gets it, but my heart doesn't get involved at all. That's not a criticism of the bike. It's just a different way of looking at motorcycling. Now, looking closely at the motorcycle in terms of its quality of parts and finish and paintwork, it's all very good. The welds are very good. All the plastics are very good. The metal parts are very good. Everything you see is superb quality. Like Darcy was saying, it just doesn't seem to have that exceptional polish that perhaps we look for in the styling of a motorcycle. Now, looking at the 8T, we seem to be focusing on the 8TT because I think we're more drawn to that one than this one. Do you think, we all know what you think, should Suzuki have just made one model and then you just choose whether to have a screen on the front or not, or do you think it's right that they did the T and the 8TT, which are exactly the same bike apart from a few styling differences? When we booked these bikes in, I was planning to do three videos with them, a review of each bike and a comparison video, but I soon realized that actually we should probably just combine all of those into one video because they're basically the same bike, which is why this video you're watching now exists. For me, the next thing on the priority list is character. In a retro motorcycle, that is top of my list. For me, these bikes are a little bit lacking in the character front. They're very smooth, very well-rounded, but they don't have a lot of soul. What I mean by character is nice pops and burbles with the engine, feeling through the bars, little bits of vibration, and making the bike feel alive, which probably if you're listening to this video or watching this video and you want one of these bikes, that is a good thing for you because I don't think you're buying one of these and character is on the top of your list. It's probably at the bottom of your list. Let me know if I'm wrong in the comments below. Me saying I want it to vibrate more is probably making some people think, what on earth are you talking about? That is the sort of bike that I lust after, something with feeling and character, which probably I'd be better off buying the 70s or 80s sports bikes that these take some inspiration from. It's interesting, that chap there is the local gardener for this land. He said he much prefers the GSX-8T without the fairing. We prefer the one with the fairing. It just shows you that they have designed a bike that's pretty much the same but appeals to very different tastes just from changing subtle things. The color makes a difference as well. Even though this tank is the same, I think it looks very different on this bike just because this has got much more of a subtle color scheme. It feels more retro on this whereas it feels more modern on that but it's the same. Like we said at the beginning, we're going to tell you who these bikes are for and who they're not for. They're not for somebody who wants to burble around the country lanes or the busy cities because one, they're a little bit too snappy for that. They want to go fast and you'll be feeling that you're holding them back all the time. The riding position is more sporty than it is comfortable for that sort of riding. You definitely need to be the sort of person that wants to go fast, use that acceleration, enjoy that power and that speed and be halfway between a mental rider who wants to scrape their knee and their elbow on the ground because it won't do that. It will scrape the pegs before you but that's fast enough for most people and I think that's the sort of happy medium that you'll find with these bikes. I know a lot of superbike and very powerful sport bike riders will say well these aren't that fast but it depends where you're coming from doesn't it. If you're new to riding these are plenty fast enough. If you're used to modern classics and that sort of thing you're going to find these pretty powerful. So that's the sort of person I'd say it's for. Let us know in the comments what you think and we'll see you on the next video. We've got some great videos coming up so make sure you subscribe.