At the NEC in late November 2007 I plead guilty for not giving this latest announcement from Suzuki my full attention…no I was too swept up looking at their new Hayabusa, but now I am giving it the attention it deserves. On the 15th January 2008 Suzuki announced that the new Bandit 1250SA Grand Touring should be in show rooms in the UK within a month.

Basically they have taken the standard Bandit 1250 then added an upper and lower fairing, 3 case luggage system and a Garmin Zumo 550 GPS all for £6799! Yip, not bad at all, all that for £1500 more then the naked Bandit. Everything about it seems to make huge sense. OK, for the type of biker I am. My first (and usually only modifications) are an alarm, hard cases, crash bungs and a scottoiler.

I consider my Kawasaki ER-6F (or Ninja 650) to be the best budget all-rounder, commute, tour and fun all in one great package. So the new Bandit GT would be a perfect step up, as long as none of the other manufacturer’s try to play Suzuki at their own game by offering similar packages. But this motorcycle is certainly worth more attention then I gave it originally and you never know, in 3 years time I might be going back to the manufacturer who I got my first motorcycle from all those years ago, one Suzuki Intruder 125!

Keep the rubber side down.