It took four tries but I finally got a clear run down our six-kilometre test straight with no wind, no birds (you have no idea how much damage a guinea-fowl can do at 250km/h) and no distractions – and the Suzuki GSX-R600 K7 rewarded me with a one-way best of 271km/h, making it officially the fastest 600 motoring.co.za has yet reviewed.
It was also only one km/h slower than the 272km/h I got on the bike's GSX-R750 sibling.
What's more important, it was rock steady at that speed; in fact it's extraordinarily stable at any speed, given its 161kg weight (or lack thereof) and cobby 1400mm wheelbase

That's partly due to a conventional but perfectly weighted steering damper and partly thanks to a low, 810mm seat heat – but mostly it's because the designers of Suzuki's latest midweight screamer concentrated on getting all the major masses, including the rider and the exhaust system, concentrated as close as possible to the bike's centre of effort.
Hence the low seat heat and the big collector box under the transmission that's also the silencer; the little triangular tailpipe under the rider's right foot is mostly for show.

Restacking the gearbox shafts has made the engine more compact and allowed Suzuki to lengthen the swing-arm by 37mm without increasing the wheelbase or overall length.
The chassis has been set up for slower, slightly lazier handling than some of its competitors (which grown-up riders will find reassuring) and the factory suspension settings are biased towards street comfort rather than race-track precision – which doesn't help much as the seat is a genuine 1980's plastic plank reminiscent of Yamaha at its worst

Suzuki quotes 92kW at 13 500rpm and 67.6Nm at 11 500rpm; unsurprisingly, it's distinctly lazy below 8000rpm, with an occasional stumble in the fuel-injection mapping just below that figure.

The flat, angry howl from the air box starts at about 5000rpm, however, and the bigger the handful you give it the more hard-edged it sounds; it sounds like a MotoGP bike at full chat and it makes you want to rev the bike harder just to hear it.
Above 10 000rpm things get really manic; the bike accelerates like a scrambler on steroids, you feel a strong secondary tingling through the handlebars and footpegs and the howl of the engine is perfectly in tune with the rush of adrenalin throughout your body.

Suddenly you're overtaking three cars at a time between corners on your favourite twisties instead of the usual one - just because you can!
The power tails off sharply after 14 000rpm, however, so there's not much sense in chasing the rev-limiter, which comes in at 16 500rpm; rather short-shift (if you can call it that!) at 13 500 and use the engine's torque curve to make things happen.

The downside of five-figure rev-counters, of course, is thirst; the Gixer is typical in this regard, recording a fairly extravagant 6.9 litres/100km over a week of commuting and a couple of long, fast rides.
That's when I found out just how good the brakes are; the 310mm floating discs and Tokico radial mount, four-piston callipers are controlled by a Nissin radial master cylinder and the combination is a masterpiece.

It combines enormous power with ultra-sensitive control and highlights why similar set-ups are regarded as essential on GP race bikes.
Most disc brake systems just help you slow the wheels down – the very best allow you to vary the rate of deceleration by varying lever pressure. On the GSX-R600 you can use the brakes to tighten or widen your line in the middle of a corner; the feedback is that accurate, the control that precise.

The seating position is a little cramped for riders taller than 1.8m, in an attempt to centralise the rider's mass as well as that of the machine, while the little sports screen is upright enough to enable the rider to see the instruments properly even when sitting up in traffic – which is sufficiently unusual to be noteworthy.
The instruments themselves consist of an analogue rev-counter with an inset gear position indicator and a multifunction LCD screen for speed distance, range, temperature and all sorts of other trivia.

The GSX-R600, like its predecessor, is an honest-to-goodness hooligan tool, but an extraordinarily well-mannered one; Suzuki has combined screaming performance and hair-trigger handling with unusual stability for this type of machine – and that alone makes it worth a second look.

Source Motoring.co.za