Dream Bikes: Suzuki GT 750

My grandparents on my mother’s side owned a cabin in Cashiers, North Carolina. Built on the side of a steep hill you had to hand carry everything up to the cabin. Maybe if we had a 4-wheel drive we could have made it to the cabin, but my grandparents owned a Volkswagen van. The VW would start spinning its wheels halfway up. Mr. Price, who also lived in Cashiers, built the cabin.  It was a slow process as The Grands paid as they went, never going into debt for the place. Mr. Price was easy going and worked on the place whenever he was sent money.

After about ten years of walking to the cabin my Grandfather, Grandmother, Billy Mac and me poured a concrete driveway to the cabin. It was about ten feet wide. The concrete trucks couldn’t make it all the way to the top so we manhandled buckets and buggies to pour that section. Further down we could just dump it out of the truck into the forms.

The job was easier than it sounds because we only had to strike off the top and finish the edges. The driveway had a concave shape to funnel water down the middle like a big sluice. We left the driveway as poured to provide a high traction, rough surface. At intervals we troweled an expansion groove. All in, the driveway was probably 300 feet long. After the driveway was built a car could make it to the cabin and it was real luxury not having to carry stuff up the steep, muddy driveway.

The road to the cabin was dirt, winding past two small lakes that were full of fish. Several roads split off the main road and at the last split before Gran & Gramp’s cabin there was a house with a purple-pink, GT750 Suzuki parked out front. The GT had three, flat black expansion chambers fighting for position underneath the crankcase.

I had read about the Suzuki triple cylinder in Popular Mechanics magazine but this was the first time I saw one in real life. Popular Mechanics did a road test on the bike and loved the big Suzuki. It got fairly good fuel mileage and Suzuki’s complex CCI oiling system was stingy with the injector oil. The Suzuki 750 was regarded as a touring bike, not at all like Kawasaki’s mad, mad three-cylinder H2 750.

The air in the mountain valleys carried sound in mysterious ways and when the owner of the Suzuki started the bike those expansion chambers cackled in on me from all directions at once. Was he above me, below me? Heading away or towards me? It was surround sound of the very best kind. I had a Honda Mini Trail and would ride over to the Suzuki house just to look at the bike. Polished aluminum cases, a color-coordinated radiator, big tachometer and speedo with a water temperature gauge: it didn’t seem like a touring bike to me. It seemed like something from another planet.

In the USA GT750s haven’t reached silly H2 prices yet. Their slightly boring reputation keeps the price low-ish. The engines last quite a long time and a GT750 turning 50,000 miles without a rebuild would not be unusual. A quick Google search brings up runners from $3500 to $8000 and that’s not bad compared to the overly complex modern stuff we are faced with at the local Mega Brand Dealer.

Probably the later GT750s are better motorcycles than the early ones. Suzuki improved the front brake and bumped up the power slightly towards the end of production. The first GTs had a Buck Rodgers look that you either loved or hated. I loved it. Really, I’d be fine with any year. The double-sided, twin leading shoe front brake on the first one was a thing of beauty and I’m guessing stopped good enough.

Of all the three-cylinder Suzukis I think the 750 is best. The 380 was a dog, the 550 was almost unnoticeable on the bike scene in those days. The big, water-cooled GT 750 made a huge splash (ha) and still ranks as one of my one-day, must-have dream motorcycles.

The Suzuki GT 750 is a sensible classic that you can ride everyday and cross the country on if the mood hits you. That’s not why I want one. I want one because of the sound it made in the mountains of North Carolina. I can hear it as I type this sentence, a cross between the whining of a tornado and the keys of a mechanical typewriter slapping onto the page.

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