Suzuki Motorcycle India has silently pulled the plug on the Katana supernaked in our market. The Katana was a litre-class supernaked wrapped in some edgy ’80s throwback retro styling and was sold here for a little over three years.
- Suzuki Katana used a K5-derived 999cc, 4-cyl motor
- With 152hp and 106Nm on tap, it was properly fast
Suzuki has no 1,000cc four cylinder bike in India anymore
Currently, Suzuki’s big bike portfolio has three models.
The Katana was powered by a 999cc, 4-cylinder engine, making 152hp and 106Nm, and its chassis components were similar to Suzuki’s GSX-S1000 supernaked. Where the Katana went down its distinct path was in its sharp styling inspired by the original model of the same name from the ’80s. Its last recorded price was Rs 13.61 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi), and its sole competitor was Honda’s recently launched CB1000 Hornet SP (Rs 12.36 lakh).
In its own right, the Katana was a fast, fun and striking-looking thing, but it somehow never managed to sell well, even in the context of India’s minuscule big-bike sales figures. Regularly available with six-figure discounts from dealerships on brand-new bikes, the Katana, despite ticking the boxes that a traditional Indian superbike buyer looks for (inline-4 sound and Japanese reliability chief among them), was unable to capture the imagination of a prospective customer.
With the nixing of the Katana, if you want an inline-4 machine from Suzuki, you’ve got to take the plunge and get the big, bad Hayabusa (Rs 16.90 lakh). The other big bikes the Hamamatsu-based marque retails here are the GSX-8R (Rs 9.25 lakh) and the V-Strom 800DE (Rs 10.30 lakh) – both of them powered by the same 776cc parallel-twin motor. The company has recently resurrected the GSX-R1000R superbike, but there’s no word so far on whether the big Gixxer will return to our shores, leaving Suzuki with a gaping 1,000cc-sized hole in its big-bike portfolio.
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
