The Hans Muth And Suzuki Katana Connection

[Hugh Janus]

Hans Muth on his personal MV Agusta, before its transformation. (Courtesy of Hans Muth/)

Gather round, meine Damen und Herren, because we’re about to explore one of the most fascinating motorcycle backstories of the 1980s: how a Japanese company hired a German wunderkind to design a motorcycling icon of the Blade Runner era—Suzuki’s original 1982 GS1000SZ Katana.

The Katana was a shocker when it first appeared, a machine that stood out everywhere it showed up. And that was exactly what Suzuki wanted when it hired Hans Muth to create a look.

Muth was and still is an interesting character. Born in 1935 in Rathenow, just west of Berlin, he witnessed his mother being shot dead by the advancing Red Army 10 years later. He characterizes his upbringing as strict Prussian, taught to be respectful, polite, well-behaved, ­disciplined, honest, and obedient. Above all, he developed a refined value for orderliness—something that characterizes all of his designs. Rather than pursue a career in his family’s optics company, Muth applied to art school, where he largely ignored the rote assignments and spent his time drawing cars.

So many great designs get compromised, yet the production Katana was nearly identical to the original ED-2 concept. The keen-eyed will note the lack of a windshield, the logo placement, and an unusual exhaust routing. (Courtesy of Hans Muth/)

Eventually, this led to a position at BMW. Muth started on the automotive side, but by 1975, he was working for the motorcycle division. Remember, in the early 1970s, BMWs were typically reserved Teutonic twins, staid black bikes valued by eccentric college professors and long-­distance riders. From Muth’s brush flowed some radical new touchpoints of style: the juicy, smoke-faded Daytona Orange R90S, the R100RS with its spectacular sculpted fairing, and the original R80GS dual sport. Suddenly, BMWs were on everyone’s radar.

Including the Japanese.

In 1980, Suzuki struggled under the same burden BMW had just overcome. In the company’s own words, its bikes were technically accomplished but offered “­warehouse styling.” Suzuki asked Muth to generate a product identity, to get away from what it called “follow the leader,” which, ironically, was Honda’s advertising tag line in America.

Several years earlier, Muth had participated in an interesting exercise. Helmuth Luckner from the German magazines Motorrad and Motorrad-Revue had contacted three designers—Muth, Ferdinand “Butzi” Porsche, and Giorgetto Giugiaro (Lotus Esprit S1, DeLorean)—and given them a dream assignment: Pick a motorcycle, ride it, and then redesign it to make it personally yours. Muth chose an MV Agusta 750S and called his design the Prova. The drawings were such a hit that a ridable one-off was built.

The discerning enthusiast will glimpse a bit of Prova DNA in the Katana, like someone observing that you have your grandfather’s nose or hands. Personally, I see it in Muth’s BMW R65LS as well. Like the Katana, the Prova is a big transverse four.

Newly separated from BMW, Muth immersed himself in Japanese culture and history. Especially influential were two books: Eugene Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery and Reinhard Kammer’s Zen and Confucius in the Art of Swordsmanship. And it’s from this second title that the concept emerges, inspired by the classic, gently curved Japanese sword named katana.

Muth characterizes the Suzuki Katana by what he calls its dramatic “flyline,” melding five key components into stylistic and aerodynamic unity: headlight, fuel tank, seat, and front and rear fenders. Central to the Katana’s unique identity is its “V-shaped gas tank,” describing the way the tank narrows toward the rider and diverges toward the front of the bike. Muth’s design was rendered in silver—like the sword. Originally, it had no windshield—that was Suzuki’s requirement. On the side cover Muth added the Japanese character for the katana sword, interleaved with a red image of the same sword. “The sword first serves as a weapon, but a katana also has a mythological meaning in Japan,” Muth said when he presented the design to Osamu Suzuki. “If you don’t treat it right, its sharpness can be lethal. The same is true for a motorcycle.”

Muth transformed his MV into the one-off Prova, his purest execution of the “flyline.” (Courtesy of Hans Muth/)

Suzuki was silent for a long while, then replied, “Mutho-san, I am truly thankful to you that you haven’t named it hara-kiri.”

When it appeared in America, the Katana was one of the most daring, integrated, completely styled bikes we’d seen. The original design was based on a GS1100 engine, while riders in the US got a 1,000cc version, eligible for AMA Superbike racing. It had legit, below-the-triple-crown clip-ons like a racebike or an Italian exotic. It had a stretched-out “racer replica” riding position that was extreme in those days of wide handlebars and sit-up superbikes. The road tests in Cycle and Cycle World discuss cam timing and valve overlap at length (36.5˚ BTDC; 63.5˚ ABDC; 10 degrees), but what to make of the way it looked? Muth is mentioned by name only once in the ­Cycle World story, and not at all in Cycle. The ­emphasis then was the performance we could measure—we had developed no adequate vocabulary or “eye dyno” for style.

Muth’s R65LS “Bavarian Boxer,” another Katana precursor. Painting the lower tank black slims its lines immensely. (Courtesy of Hans Muth/)

And make no mistake, the Katana’s performance was every bit as extreme as its look. It was the fastest 1,000cc production motorcycle Cycle World had ever tested. Cycle noted it was the strongest 1,000 ever put into a production bike. It was expensive. It offered a harsh ride around town, but the faster you rode it, the better it worked. And it had an evocative name when most Japanese bikes and just about every Suzuki were identified by a businesslike (warehouselike?) collection of letters and numbers.

Muth himself is a man of constant motion. After the Katana he moved on to designing cameras, golf clubs, watches, and bicycles, as well as teaching. Now 85 years old, he’s just written a book, Design Macht Mut(h). That last word is a play on his name and the German morpheme for courage—Design Makes Courage/Design Makes Muth. Generously illustrated, at present it’s available only in German, but there’s hope for an English version. Still, it’s as good a reason as any to brush up on your Deutsch, nicht wahr?

Hans Muth (Courtesy of Hans Muth/)

It’s no surprise a flame that burned as brightly as the Katana didn’t burn for long. The late 1970s and early 1980s exploded with motorcycling development—­ air-cooled transverse fours gave way to V-4s, which in turn surrendered to liquid-cooled inlines. Turbos appeared on the scene and were gone just as fast. Sixteen-inch front wheels. Radial tires. Aluminum frames. By 1984 and ’85, Suzuki introduced its perimeter-frame GSX-R series, or “racebikes with lights,” their fuel-tank shapes the ­complete opposite of the Katana’s divergent “V.” AMA ­Superbikes became 750s. The Katana was a brief, outstanding moment in all of it, drawn by a man whose genius has stood the test of time, with a design that ­continues to resonate and turn heads 40 years later.

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