Recursion gets a boost

Suzuki’s turbocharged twin looks likely to hit showrooms soon

The last time Suzuki turned a forced-induction concept bike into a production model it took six years to reach showrooms and lost its boost along the way. The firm isn’t about to make the same mistake again and there’s now a large dossier of evidence to suggest that its turbocharged Recursion is set to reach showrooms in the near future – despite the firm’s denials.

In case you missed it, the Recursion was Suzuki’s show-stopper from the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show. Revealed in December of that year, it’s a 588cc parallel twin sports bike with a radical turbocharged engine intended to offer an unbeatable combination of economy and performance. And in the 19 months since its unveiling there’s been a steady flow of evidence from Suzuki that the Recursion is much more than a mere trinket intended to draw crowds to its show stands.

The latest evidence is perhaps the most important of all. On September 2, Suzuki filed an application for a trademark on the name Recursion for use on ‘motorcycles and the parts and fittings thereof’. In other words, it wants to make sure it can use the name on a commercial basis; no firm would trademark a name it used two years earlier on a concept bike unless it has intent to use that same name again, on a production machine.

There’s no cast-iron guarantee that the production Recursion will be the same as the concept bike, but allied to the large number of patents that Suzuki has filed around the Recursion’s turbo technology, it seems highly likely that the production version will be at least a close relative.

Those patents have already revealed a host of details that would never be seen if the concept was merely a mock-up.

The timing of Suzuki’s trademark application hints that the bike could be launched before the end of this year. There is now a three-month period during which any objections to the trademark can be raised and considered, and if there are none the mark is expected to be granted in December.