Used Bike Bargain: The Suzuki GS500

On December 22, 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted an unusual fin in a pile of discarded waste fish on a dock in East London, South Africa. Latimer, a local museum curator, didn’t know why the 127-pound deep-blue fish to which that fin was attached was special—but she knew it was special, so she convinced an expert to come see it two months later. He identified it as a coelacanth, an ancestor of both modern fish and modern animals, thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago. Of course, nobody told the coelacanth that it was supposed to have gone extinct with the T. rex. It’s just been minding its own business this whole time, and since it wasn’t really broken, evolution didn’t see any need to fix it.

Think of Suzuki’s GS500 as a two-wheeled take on the coelacanth. Introduced in 1989 as an unfaired four-valve parallel-twin streetbike, it received a fairing and a few updates for the American market in 2004—but it persisted in its original form all the way to 2019 elsewhere. That’s a pretty long run, particularly for a motorcycle that was never the fastest or fiercest example of its class, not even upon its introduction.

“While top-end performance isn’t likely to be spectacular…the GS500 should be a torquey and practical motorcycle.” Our cautious optimism in December 1988 proved to be more or less on the mark. With about 40 horsepower at the rear wheel, the little Suzuki was a high-13-second quarter-mile proposition at best, and it ran out of steam in a hurry on the freeway. On the other hand, the box-­section steel frame followed modern ­practice, the running gear was absolutely modern, and the wet weight was comfortably under 400 pounds. It had little competition in a world gone mad for stratosphere-spinning inline-fours with four or five valves per cylinder; only Kawasaki’s half-faired EX500 (later the Ninja 500) was in the same neighborhood, and that was a considerably more ­sporting proposition.

No, it wasn’t as fast as a 600cc supersport, but in a straight line, it was within shouting distance of the era’s Ferraris and Corvettes at a price well below that of the cheapest economy cars. Our testers weren’t that impressed; after it lost comparison tests in both 1991 and 1992, in a cheap-bike roundup in 1994, we wrote, “Swinging a leg over Suzuki’s sporty entry-level standard was…the short straw of the lot.” By then, however, the GS500 was several hundred dollars cheaper than a ­Ninja 500 or a Yamaha Seca II, and that was enough to ensure its marketplace survival. Like the coelacanth, it just kept swimming along the ocean floor while the battle raged far above its head.

You could also find these ­bargain-basement specials on racetracks everywhere. In much the same way you’ll find road-going ­Ferraris in the paddocks of Spec Miata races, the GS500E became popular as a disposable track rat among the owners of mega- powered street superbikes. What the single-front-disc setup and narrow tires lacked in lap-time potential, they gained back in the low cost of consumables. Much like their air-/oil-cooled GSX-R cousins, the GS engines gained a reputation for being unburstable, even in clumsy hands.

Customer interest in the GS500 waned around the turn of century, with a corresponding negative ­effect on dealer stockpiles, so Suzuki gave the little twin a rest for model year 2003 before reintroducing it as the fully faired, stacked-headlight GS500F in 2004. Production was moved from Japan to Spain during the hiatus. It didn’t get any faster as a result of that new bodywork; as a matter of fact, the extra weight ­added a half-second to the quarter-mile time. But CW Road Test Editor Don Canet liked the comfortable seat and ­5.3-gallon fuel tank, and noted, “What Suzuki has done is transform a city dweller into what may be the most economical sport-touring bike you can buy.” A full 15 years after its introduction, the little twin finally beat its Kawasaki rival in a straight ­comparison-test fight, in no small part because it was visually similar to its weapons-grade GSX-R stablemates. The last year in the US for the GS was 2009.

It’s not difficult to make the argument that an emissions-legal GS500E would still find American buyers in 2020, particularly given the relative success of Honda’s 500cc parallel-twin range, which closely shadows the old Suzuki in power, weight, and cost. There’s a hole in the company’s current lineup between its 250cc parallel twins and the 650cc V-twin SV models. There’s also a brand-new generation of would-be motorcyclists who have no macho hang-ups about getting started on something less than a 600cc race replica; Suzuki might be missing a trick here by not offering them a modern GS with an LED headlight and fresh aesthetics.

Happily, for those potential riders and for the rest of us, the GS500 still makes good sense as a pre-owned proposition, something we recognized in 2015 by choosing the faired F model as a Best Used Bike. With the exception of a few fueling-related annoyances common to bikes of that pre-fuel-injected era—problems with the vacuum-­operated petcock are common and easily rectified with a conversion to manual operation—these are reliable, long-lasting choices with great spare-parts availability.

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That traditional Suzuki air-cooled durability, coupled with the generally sane uses to which these modestly powered motorcycles are put, likely means you will continue to see the GS500 on Main Street for many years to come. Don’t be surprised to find it in daily use a few decades hence. Like the coelacanth, the Suzuki GS500 will simply keep going about its business—­unworried, unfixed, unbroken.