Get on this little Adventurer, turn on the gas, flip the choke, push the button, and that cheerful two-stroke burble comes out the well-muffled exhaust.

Cruise down the suburban street, out into the country, engine warmed, drop the five-speed tranny down two gears, wind it out to the 8,500-rpm redline, shift, shift again, and a lightweight solo rider on a slight downhill gradient might be seeing 80 mph on the speedometer. Not bad for a little 185 back in those days, not bad at all. Even more so, these bikes were cheap to buy, cheap to run, and well suited to the factory worker and the college student.

Suzuki was in its two-stroke stage back then, and had built some exceptional machines in the late 1960s, followed by the excellent triples. One innovation of which the company was most proud was the Ram Air concept, very apparent on this little twin. Take a close look and one sees that this is a vertical twin, parallel cylinders standing upright. The cylinders are perfectly square, 49mm by 49mm, and the air rams are actually built into the cylinder heads. As opposed to being bolted on, as with the 380 and 550 triples.

The patented Ram Air design was not of any use around town, but out on the open road it allowed these two-strokes to motor along at close to maximum power with no undue side effects, such as overheating.

ABOUT THIS MOTORBIKE

• Comes complete with Original Suzuki Owners manual
• Two Stroke, Ram Air
• Very tidy condition in good working order.
• This Japanese lightweight is great fun. What makes this little Suzuki delightful is its nimble handling and positive steering. Even a passing vintage bike fan would agree that its a little darling.
• Weighing just 127kg, you could fling this Suzuki over to the limits of its generous cornering clearance and even though its tyres and suspension are rudimentary, it doesn't seem to matter.
• This bike is ideal for a collector and for the just qualified rider, who doesn’t need, or want, a bigger or sportier machine. Yet while bikes would take 20 more years to evolve into machines that could be used without much modification for racing, the GT185 still offered enough visual cues to satisfy the sports fan. Take, for example, the large drum front brake with twin leading shoes, or the skimpy front mudguard blade, both of which look like they’d come from a works bike of the 60s. The big headlamp gives the bike an air of authority. Rubber bellows covering the front fork legs offered a feel of enduring quality. It is also roomy with a precisely balanced riding position that worked both in the showroom and on the road.
• Suzuki’s take on the class was – at first sight – completely fresh. Although the 185cc twin used the same basic engine and frame as the 125cc model, both were new designs without any previous lineage. The engine was novel in that while it used conventional horizontally-split crankcases, they were tipped up at the front so that the axes of the air-cooled cylinder barrels were vertical, ostensibly to help their cooling.
• Smooth and responsive - Once on the move, the bike feels smooth and responsive, the rubber-mounted engine singing up through the gears to reach more than 80mph on the speedo.

A great collectible wee bike, that will only increase in value.

Will be sold WOF'd and registered if sold in New Zealand.

FINANCE PACKAGES AVAILABLE ON REQUEST!

TRANSPORT / WORLDWIDE SHIPPING CAN BE ORGANISED ON THIS VEHICLE ON BUYER'S BEHALF AT BUYERS COST.

Viewing is STRICTLY BY APPOINTMENT only