The Suzuki Hayabusa (or GSX1300R) is a sport bike motorcycle made by Suzuki since 1999. It immediately won acclaim as the world's fastest production motorcycle, with a top speed of 188 to 194 miles per hour (303 to 312 km/h).
Hayabusa (隼?) is Japanese for "peregrine falcon", a bird that often serves as a metaphor for speed due to its vertical hunting dive, or stoop, speed of 180 to 202 miles per hour (290 to 325 km/h), the fastest of any bird. In particular, the choice of name was made because the peregrine falcon preys on blackbirds, which reflected the intent of the original Hayabusa to unseat the Honda CBR1100XX Super Blackbird as the world's fastest production motorcycle. Eventually, the Hayabusa managed to surpass the Super Blackbird by at least a full 10 miles per hour (16 km/h).
In 2000, fears of a European regulatory backlash or import ban led to an informal agreement between the Japanese and European manufacturers to govern the top speed of their motorcycles at an arbitrary limit.
The media-reported value for the speed agreement in miles per hour was consistently 186 mph, while in kilometers per hour it varied from 299 to 303 km/h, which is typical given unit conversion rounding errors. This figure may also be affected by a number of external factors, as can the power and torque values.
The conditions under which this limitation was adopted led to the 1999–2000 Hayabusa's title remaining, at least technically, unassailable, since no subsequent model could go faster without being tampered with. Thus, after the much anticipated Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R of 2000 fell 4 mph (6 km/h) short of claiming the title, the Hayabusa secured its place as the fastest standard production bike of the 20th century. This gives the unrestricted 1999–2000 models even more cachet with collectors.
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