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2004 Suzuki DL650 V-Strom |
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Monday, 20 September 2004 |
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Suzuki DL650 V-Strom
Ranger dodging by Mike Emery ~ Shooter incognito Kinney Jones
It's no secret; Suzuki hit the ball out of the proverbial park when it introduced the original SV and SV650S. The bike seemingly filled a huge void for an uncomplicated, easy going, good handling and cheap lightweight. What to do to compliment that class? How about rounding it out with a mini super-tourer? All the benefits of the easy handling 650 but with the ability to cruise long and hard, with some rider friendly sit up and beg comfort thrown in for good measure.
We spent the day blasting around the Joshua Tree National Park in sunny Southern California getting to know the latest edition to the SV family. Another home run? Well let's go see...
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Now the styling and chassis of this bike has been pinched from Suzuki's very own V-Strom 1000 and the advantages of this bike are immediately apparent once parking your bum in place. It's shorter for starters (20mm less than the V-Strom thou') and doesn't seem to have that top-heaviness of the bigger bike. That's good for two reasons, firstly the short guys can't complain, and of course, it opens this style of bike to a wider audience - women included. |
| So what is this style of bike? Zook' call it a "Sport Enduro Tourer". Most, I suspect, will lump it into the much vamped adventure tourer classification. Either way, it's an adventure with a surprising amount of sport thrown in. We were encouraged by the factory to stay on road, probably due to the other journalists waiting to ride the bikes in the following few days, and probably because we looked accident prone - a few of us pretended not to hear and went off-roading anyway, oh how we laughed. |
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Now this is no Paris-Dakar bike, but it was surprisingly capable on fast fire roads, in fact any sandy, dirty, gravel strewn or otherwise. Those roads were, in some cases, pretty chopped up and it was a great test for the new bike. Mirroring the bigger V the 650 also comes with a 19-inch hoop up front that allowed some good steering geometry without getting unstable under rougher conditions. With ample ground clearance and a fairly low C of G (compared to the bigger bike), much fun was had by all.
Suzuki is not exactly marketing this thing as a BMW-GS style off-roader but from what I could see and experience, it's very capable, especially on those off road type conditions or really anywhere that's reasonably smooth and won't compromise ground clearance. The bike really is solid in those conditions and I never saw anyone tipped over either, enough said.
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