Editing Suzuki Katana

The  Katana design was a radical departure from the production designs at that time, incorporating the forward nose and a shaped, blended fuel tank with a merged fuel tank-to-seat arrangement at a time when squared off fuel tanks and flat-faced fairings were the norm. The design also incorporates favorable aerodynamics, with emphasis placed on high-speed stability. The same generalized design had already been used in 1979 for a one-off MV Augusta from the same design team, but which never saw production (source: Target Design). When the first production Katana hit the street, it was the fastest mass-production motorcycle on the planet, ensuring the new looks were matched by unprecedented performance levels. So radical was the design departure from previous mass-market cycles that most major motorcycle magazines of the era thought the design wouldn’t fly and that it wouldn’t appeal to the masses. So little they knew — by the mid 1980’s, all the Japanese powerhouses were trying to copy the design to some degree or other, and it can be seen in such bikes as the ‘85 [[Kawasaki motorcycles|Kawasaki]] GPZ 1100. Portions of the design ethos are still visible in some current motorcycles.

In 1980 at the Cologne Motor show came the ED-2, an 1100cc version based on the Suzuki [[Suzuki GS series|GS 1100]]. Today, the only katana-prototype outside Japan stands in Austrias "Motorradmuseum Eggenburg" 100km northwest of Vienna. This was followed through in 1981 with almost no changes to the production version, which is often seen as ''the'' Katana as the design was so distinctive. This design was based around a modular concept allowing later for the addition of fairings and larger windscreens. The design was so successful in its basic form that these additional components were never made, apart from a small wind deflector screen. The unusual overlapping dials on the instrumentation were the result of arranging the mechanical components to fit as closely together as possible to reduce weight and costs.