Pour one out for the Suzuki GSX-R1000. It disappeared from the UK range in 2023, but despite soldiering on in its homeland for a little longer, the bike is now listed as discontinued on the manufacturer’s Japanese site, too.
This isn’t a surprise - Suzuki’s uninterest in top-flight motorcycle racing from 2022 onwards effectively spelt the end for its superbike. It’s a sad, end-of-an-era moment nonetheless, but we’re consoling ourselves in the only way we know how - with a trip to the classifieds.
While there, we spotted a lovely-looking 2006 example. Yep, that means it’s the legendary ‘K5’, and neatly, this K5 costs… £5k. Well, a smidge under, actually - an independent dealership in Farnborough has it listed for £4,750.
You're getting a whole heap of power for your money, as that 988cc inline-four is good for 175bhp. And so, while it’s the best part of 20 years old, it’s really not that far away from the current crop of superbike heroes like the BMW S1000RR in terms of straight-line performance. And don’t forget, it was BMW that primarily used the K5 for benchmarking purposes when developing its original S1000RR.
It won’t be quite as easy to deploy all that power, though, with the K5 lacking all the clever electronics that make modern superbikes so much more rideable than their predecessors, but the ‘purists’ among you might appreciate a machine that asks a bit more of the rider.
Our chosen K5 has been reasonably well used for a bike of this kind with 30,276 miles on the clock, and as the last service was some 5,000 miles ago, we'd probably want to get a fresh one sorted ASAP were we doing the buying. You get some extras, including a Pipe Werx exhaust, crash bobbins, a steering damper, a tail tidy and a paddock stand.
Tempted?
