uzuki pretty much invented the
modern breed of twin-cylinder
middleweight motorcycles when it first
brought the SV650 to market two decades
ago. Suzuki has continued to update and
spin-off new versions of what has proven to
be a popular and well selling staple for the
brand. I recently tested the latest incarnation
of the SV line, the cafe racer styled SV650X,
and came away fairly impressed.
Virtually all the competition around this
capacity and price point have now gone the
parallel twin route due to the packaging and
production cost advantages that the parallel
configuration brings compared to the vee
architecture. Manufacturers have used all
manner of engineering tricks in regard to
crank phasings and the like to overcome
the inherent blandness of the parallel twin
layout. Some have done a great job of it,
but it only took one twist of the throttle
on the 90-degree V-Twin that powers the
SV650X to underline the fact that the parallel
alternatives will never really feel like a proper
v-twin.
There are some other v-twin options in the
market but they are much more expensive
than the Suzuki. Ducati’s Scrambler and
Moto Guzzi’s base V7 Stone both cost many
thousands more. The Guzzi is not available
in a learner legal variant while the LAMS
Ducati Scrambler has only a modest 400cc to
motivate it.
Suzuki offers the base SV650 from $10,495 in
both full power and LAMS versions. The new,
more upmarket looking, SV650X, featured
here, retails for $11,995 be that in either full
power or learner legal variations.
The tuning of the LAMS variant this time
around seems far better than the previous
SV650 learner machines I have sampled. The
2016 model had the LAMS SV650 signing
off at 4000rpm. It kept revving to beyond
8000rpm but didn’t really seem to be doing
anything in the process and that really ruined
the experience. I expressed these quite
frustrated thoughts to Suzuki and believe
they were passed on to one of the head
engineers responsible for the model back in
Japan, perhaps they listened…
KIWI RIDER 37