Suzuki stops production of the Bandit 1250 N

Bad news for fans of large torquey and accessible roadsters: Suzuki is stopping the production of the famous Bandit 1250 Naked (not faired), due to the low sales volumes of this bike. Retrospective and explanations.

Look in the retro

As for the GSX 1400 and more recently the B-King (read), Suzuki has just interrupted production of the Bandit 1250 N, after sixteen years of a rather busy career … Flashback !

End of the last century. We are in 1995, only one year after the launch of the future bestseller Bandit 600. Suzuki then tries to double the marketing of roadsters by adding a version of higher displacement: the Bandit 1200.

Immediately, its stripped-down lines and its 1157 cc in-line four-cylinder (derived from the late GSX-R 1100) hit the mark: from its first year on the market, a few 3000 French bikers fell for the "B12".

The Bandit 1200 has been able to convince in dynamics and its "4-legged" seems to have inexhaustible reserves of torque. Especially since at the time, large roadsters capable of both making the powder speak in a straight line and holding the road in the viroleux were not so common !

But the years go by and the laurels begin to fade: for lack of major evolutions, the Bandit 1200 ages and goes from the status of a "scoundrel" roadster to that of a "cushy" roadster against the sharpest of its rivals. Suzuki manages to save furniture with aggressive pricing policy, but overhaul is inevitable.

This took place in 2007: condemned by anti-pollution standards, the air-oil-cooled engine gave way to a 1256 cc unit injected and cooled by water (read our). But Hamamatsu’s coat of arms, too conservative, is content to bet everything on this mechanical graft: the old lines and the classic cycle part (steel cradle frame, basic brakes and suspensions) hardly change..

Unsurprisingly, this "warmed up" Bandit does not manage to satiate the appetite for novelties of French bikers who prefer their compatriots Kawasaki Z1000, Yamaha FZ1 and Honda CB1000R, or turn squarely towards European motorcycles whose success is growing, with especially the Triumph Speed ​​Triple or the Ducati Monster.

Already in decline, sales of the Bandit 1250 N continue to decline and last year, only 330 registrations were recorded in France. And this despite a particularly attractive price (8,499 €), without counting regular "discounts": the 2010 models still in stock are currently sold off at 7649 €, or 250 euros less than a GSR 750 !

For Suzuki, the case is heard: the breakeven point of this iconic motorcycle, yet amortized for ages, has been reached. And discreetly, like the end of his career, the Bandit 1250 N retired from the motorcycle scene at the start of 2012…

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