(Original article and images from 2002 - Edited 2024)
For someone growing up in the post war years of austerity, motorcycles were the obvious form of transport for working class families. If you had a larger family, a sidecar could be bolted to the bike to carry numerous progeny and the wifie too. So it is no surprise that a ten year old me, was eager to have some transport as soon as I could and the obvious thing would be a motorbike.
Where I lived, an old railway line was pulled up which left a fabulous race track for us to ride our pushbikes on and later for those who had the cash, some motorised wheels too. I eventually purchased a scooter for two pounds but found the thing had no fuel tank and quickly got my money back. I then purchased a Honda 50 but this had no engine. Eventually, that too was sold on for a small profit to someone who had an engine but no bike. I know, odd times indeed. I then somehow acquired a Puch Moped but it never ran. In the end, I contented myself by having the odd go on other people’s machines down the dusty railway line, but I knew one day it would be my turn to have a bike, and when I was older… You get the picture.
As it happened, I was wrong, as life can sometimes throw a large Whitworth spanner in the works and change things. I’m not going into how, but I ended up racing cars at a local track. Nothing serious but I lied about my age and was driving what we called ‘Bomber Cars’, a sort of Destruction Derby race and this led me to forget bikes for the time, as I had no interest in the mopeds such as the FS1E’s that were popular. Eventually, when the time came, I took my car test.
I was beside myself when I failed, did they not know I was DRIVING RACING CARS?
The perversion of four wheels.
And that was probably why I failed, too cocky and too confident. But sometimes things happen in our lives that correct our mistakes. As soon as I was old enough I got my parents to buy a motorbike for me. It is easy to write down here but I’m not going into the full story of how my mother almost had a nervous breakdown when three days after picking up the bike I almost wrote it off.
Enter the TT racer Bill Lomas. Now, I’m guessing most of you have never heard of Bill Lomas and I plan a further article on him at some stage but let’s just say he was an accomplished trials rider and won many races during the early 1950s, including the Isle of Man TT twice on 350 machines. He also owned a couple of bike shops, one of which was close to where I lived at the time. When I picked up my repaired 250, he patted me on the back and gave me some pointers. Over the years I had many great conversations with Bill and his advice was crucial to keeping me alive when many others around me at that time fell to the demon of speed.
The Brilliant Bill Lomas in action
From there on, Bill and his little chats cemented my love of biking that would last all my life and I feel lucky to have known him. But it also left me with the feeling that fairings were only for racing bikes. I don’t know why but that’s how I saw it. For the next thirty or so years, I never owned a bike with a fairing and though it seems odd to me now, I thought of Bill and his words when I saw machines wearing plastic. (No, I’m not saying what his words were here. That is for a future article.)
Then, all that changed. I had just sold my 1400 Suzuki, a naked bike and was looking for something else, something different. My eye eventually stopped at an advert for a GSXR 750. It obviously had a fairing. I went to have a look at it – somewhere near Rugely in Staffordshire.
Even though the chap selling the Gixer told me that is was altered to the same spec as track bikes I got out my salt pot and gave it the once over. I liked the way it looked. It had the letters SRAD on the plastic and asking what that meant. I was told it stood for Suzuki Ram Air Direct. Now my old GT250 had Ram Air which turned out to be a bit of aluminium on the cylinder head so I scoffed at this and shelved it with the claim that the bike was good for 180. I was in for a surprise. I bought the bike and then had to ride it back to Lincolnshire where I lived at the time. There were loads of roadworks and I soon began to hate the bike. I had never ridden anything so prone and my arms ached like hell.
Then I eventually got onto the A38. Time ceased to exist. The fastest I had been on two wheels at that point was around 120 mph (on a private road of course) and this was on a naked bike which had soon become uncomfortable due to some witchcraft called physics. When I opened up the throttle my jaw dropped through my helmet making a clanging sound when it hit the tank. It wasn’t the acceleration or even the speed. It was what the fairing was doing. I had no idea how efficient the Tupperware was as it barged the air out of the way like a curry through an irritable bowel, and sent me like a missile up the dual carriageway. I’m not going to say what speed I eventually shut off at but let’s just say I realised the previous owner wasn’t joking. It was a transformation so acute that stayed with me to this day and I have been a fan of fairings since. It had been a leap into the dark but a light had come on and my riding changed for ever.
That isn’t to say that I can wax so lyrical about the bike itself as it had a few warts which in most cases are to be expected. An all-out sports bike isn’t going to have a great deal of grunt, particulalrly one that has been messed with but frankly, you had to keep the revs up on the thing for it to be of use. Two up was a joke but it wasn’t meant for touring. The brakes were very good however and a couple of times I did an unintentional stoppie. The handling was good on the whole but even after setting the suspension up to suit me, I still felt I could have done with more adjustment. I had planned to change the oil and the springs in the forks but never got around to it. For such a severe style of sportsbike the Gixer was surprisingly comfortable as long as you were on the open road but like most prone bikes, they can be tiring in towns.
All-in-all, the bike does what you would expect for a high-performance 750 lightweight and though these bikes a little long in the tooth, they still look good and perform well. In their day they were king and as one avid Gixer owner one told me, SRAD really means ‘Suzuki Rapes All Ducatis.’
