52 amcn.com.au
SUZUKI RG500Just do it
Being an apprentice cabinet maker, I didn’t have
the funds to go out and buy a bike, I had to get a
loan which meant I had just one chance at getting
it right. I remember walking in to Mick Hone
Motorcycles in Adelaide, a little shop on North East
Road and eyed up the two bikes I hoped would set
me on the path to international stardom.
There was the brand-new Suzuki RG500 Gamma
roadbike on the left and on the right, the new GSX-
R750. It just didn’t compute to me that the GSX-R
could amount to anything – sure, it looked like a
racer, but so did Honda’s XR75.
The salesman had a demo RG500 and let me take
it for a spin down the North East Road and my god,
it was fast. Back in those days in Adelaide, not too
many people worried about speeding and I certainly
wasn’t thinking about it – I was thinking more about
looking like Barry Sheene.
The RG wheelied at a whim even in the peak hourtraffic and until this day there are only a few bikes
that loft the wheel as easily as the RG did. It was the
perfect bike to take my racing to the next level, with
its alloy frame and futuristic 16-inch front wheel.
The square-four engine was modelled straight
from Sheene’s title-winning bike and it was light.
A dry weight of just 156kg with nearly 75kW at the
crank made it the lightest mid-sized bike on the
market and it promised to make Yamaha RZ500
owners run for cover.
I ran it in heading west to Port Pire and back and
the further I went, the higher the speed increased. I
got my first motorcycle speeding ticket on that RG,
clocked doing 135km/h in a 110 zone: lucky, though,
because not long before I was pinged I was ‘running
it in’ at a much higher speed.Highs and lows
There was one particular meeting at Mallala where I
started my first ever wet race on the beast.The Suzuki
RG500 was the
best and most
thrilling bike
I had owned
and ridden
The making of a world
champ: Steve Martin and
his beloved RG at Adelaide
International Raceway