Suzuki B-King Coming to US

Suzuki recently announced the long awaited B-King would be going into production as a 2007 model. As with so many recent announcements, it had the qualifier “not for the U.S.” added to the news release. With that in mind, I just decided to ignore the whole thing, it’s a story that gets old and reporting on bikes for everyone but us is frustrating.

This bike, if you’re not familiar with it, was first called the Boost King because as a concept way back in 2001, it was fitted with a turbocharger and produced around 250 horsepower. As it gradually moved closer to production, it lost the turbo so now it’s a Hayabusa powered naked bike. Hmm … why call it the B-King? What does the “B” stand for?

Styling for the production bike is pretty close to the concept and opinions are mixed but nevertheless, a 1300cc Hayabusa powered naked bike does have a certain charm.

Well, one of our readers just sent us a link to a B-King article over at Cycle World where we missed the small update at the bottom:

News from the U.S. Suzuki dealer show in Las Vegas indicates that the B-King is indeed coming to America, sometime in 2007 as an early-release ’08 model.

Now we’re talkin’. I’m glad Suzuki started thinking about their decision to cordon off the U.S. A lot of frustrated Yamaha Vmax owners are looking for a powerful naked bike and if Yamaha doesn’t get in gear with the new Vmax pretty soon, the B-King will grab some of their potential customers before they get a crack at them and might set a pretty high bar for the Vmax to hurdle.

I can’t help but think the stunt crowd will snap up these bikes like crazy, after all, a sit up naked bike with Hayabusa power is what they want anyway, now they don’t have to strip off the bodywork, and just think of the aftermarket this will spawn plus it will probably be able to use much of the Hayabusa add ons already out there. Neat.

Thanks for the tip, Jim!

Link: Cycle World

Related: Suzuki B-King for Production?