Suzuki Gsf 1200 Bandit

The 1157cc air-cooled four pulls like a freight train from 3,000 rpm — you're never hunting for gears on a city street or A-road blast, just rolling the throttle and hanging on. Suzuki basically stuffed a GSX-R1100 engine into a naked frame and called it a day, which is either lazy engineering or genius depending on your mood. The chassis is agricultural — those twin rear shocks are wallowy under hard braking and the front end gives you a vague telegram rather than a direct phone call — but it's forgiving in a way that masks genuine speed from both the rider and traffic cameras. Heat soak in summer traffic is genuinely unpleasant on your inner thighs, and the finish quality is bargain-basement, but at the price these trade hands for, none of that matters.

The Gen 2 Bandit 1200 irons out most of what annoyed people about the first generation — the forks are vastly better, the brakes actually inspire confidence now, and the minor engine tweaks smoothed out a slight flat spot around 4,000 rpm that plagued early bikes. That air-cooled four still pulls like a freight train from 3,500 rpm upward, and at motorway speeds it's so relaxed you forget you're sitting on nearly 100 horses. The updated half-fairing keeps the wind blast manageable on long days, though after 250 miles your wrists will remind you this isn't a touring bike — the bars are low enough to punish you. It leaks a little oil around the rocker cover gaskets after 30,000 miles, the rear shock is a compromise at best, and that 223 kg wet weight becomes obvious in slow car park manoeuvres, but none of that really matters once you're out on an open A-road.

The 2006 Bandit 1200S is essentially a farewell lap for one of the great unfussy bruisers — and it goes out swinging. That oil-cooled inline-four pulls like a freight train from 3,000 rpm, and the fuel injection on the S model finally cleaned up the notorious cold-start carb stumble that plagued earlier generations. The chassis updates are subtle — slightly stiffer rear linkage, revised geometry — but the bike still feels planted and honest rather than sharp, rewarding smooth riders over aggressive ones. My gripe is the same one it's always been: the suspension is underdamped for anything faster than spirited A-road work, and at 228 kg wet you feel every one of those kilos in tight urban traffic.