| February 5, 2023
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
The Rotary: Suzuki’s Short-Lived RE5
In 1975, two full decades before print advertising for nicotine products would be banned, the February issue of Cycle World magazine carried a full-page ad on its back cover for Camel Filter Cigarettes. “They’re not for everybody” the ad read, “but they could be for you.”
Suzuki’s rotary-powered RE5 had a short life but left its mark. This Suzuki RE5 is owned and was restored/modified by RE5 enthusiast Jess Stockwell.
By Kent Taylor
That very message could’ve also been printed on the magazine’s front cover, which featured the brand-new 500cc Suzuki RE5, a rotary-engined heavyweight that the company was billing as “the smoothest touring machine ever made.” A few companies, including Yamaha and MZ, had flirted with the idea of a rotary motorcycle, but only Suzuki was ready to make a commitment to the relationship. After more than four years in the R&D stage, the RE5 finally arrived in dealer showrooms—to a very tepid response.
The backstory begins with a German engineer named Felix Wankel. Wankel believed in many theories (including, at least briefly, Nazism) but when it came to internal combustion engines, he looked at the status quo and envisioned a more linear system. Whereas a piston pumps and pushes, the rotor of the rotary rotates, much as the rear wheel will when it ultimately receives that power. It was a better idea, he reasoned and one with far fewer moving parts. Wankel patented his design and the rotary engine found early use in aircraft application, then in automobiles (most notably the Mazda RX series) and eventually for motorcycles like the Suzuki RE5.
The discerning motorcyclist’s eye is understandably drawn to the RE5. The “Fire Mist Orange” tank and side panels scream the 1970’s obsession with offensively loud colors. Instrumentation is housed in a horizontally placed cylinder atop the headlight and the gauges are protected by a contoured translucent cover; turn the ignition key and the cover slides up and open, just like an astronaut’s face shield. A similarly designed taillight brings up the rear, while the polished cases of the engine pull your attention away from the enormously large radiator that the RE5 needs to keep itself cool. If the rotary engine was indeed the future for all things motorized, Suzuki succeeded in making the rest of the RE5 look the part.
The magazines weren’t kind to the RE5, and it never caught on with the public, although it was a decent motorcycle at the time.
Cycle World did the RE5 no favors with their initial test, taking it straight from the crate and thrusting it headlong into a three-bike comparison. The new, unproven Suzuki would be up against BMW’s venerable R90/6, an established tourer with decades of development under its belt and Kawasaki’s Z-1 900, which was the coolest guy in school in the mid 70s. The Suzuki, which gave away 400cc to each of its opponents, couldn’t compete with the best touring bike of the early ’70s or with one of the fastest production models of the era (the Z-1 clocked the quarter mile at 12.7 seconds) and finished dead last in the comparison test. The magazine chirped that “Revolutionary design doesn’t always produce the best product,” and decreed that Suzuki put “too much effort into the engine and neglected the little necessities.”
Was it truly a bad motorcycle? At least one owner doesn’t think so.
“Imagine you’re sitting on a bungee cord,” says RE5 enthusiast Jess Stockwell. “Stretch it out for a mile and then let it go. That’s the experience you get when you ride an RE5!”
Without a snicker or snippet of self-deprecation, Stockwell introduces himself as the “world’s foremost authority on the Suzuki RE5!” A retired attorney living in Tennessee, Stockwell once owned approximately 400 RE5 models, selling bits and pieces around the world under the business name “Rotary Recycle.” (By his own admission, however, Stockwell took up the mantle upon the 2017 passing of the original “King of All Things RE5,” a fellow by the name of Sam Costanzo. Costanzo was the founder of “Rotary Recycle.” Prior to that, he worked with Suzuki, helping to train mechanics at special tech schools dedicated to the inner workings of the RE5).
Stockwell’s affinity for the rotary began in the early 1980s, when, at the age of 19, he bought his first RE5. One rotary leads to another and he “would search the classifieds for them,” he says. “There would be low mileage examples that didn’t run—some of them had fewer than 2500 miles. I knew how to get them going again.
A Suzuki ad of the RE5 in the mid-1970s.
“The RE5 revs high,” Stockwell says, “and they needed to be ridden more like a two-stroke. Many of these bikes were just ridden wrong. The owners would list them as ‘ran when parked’ and some of them didn’t have more than 2500 miles on the odometer.”
While the design of the Wankel engine is simple (essentially a shaft, a rotor, the stationary gear and the cylinder), Suzuki’s RE5 was complex in almost every other way. “They opted for the peripheral port system,” he says, “and that was part of the trouble.”
Beyond the engine, the Suzuki’s two-stage carburetor was a brilliant, yet complex design, requiring no fewer than five cables to push fuel/air through its staggeringly high number of jets—14, to be exact!
There were other issues that confronted owners, including the $27 (in 1975) retail price of the purpose-built NGK A-9 EFP spark plug. Additionally, many Suzuki dealers would not provide service or repairs for the RE5. According to Stockwell, having a trained mechanic was a prerequisite for all dealers wanting to carry the RE5 on their showroom floors.
“One dealer told me ‘that is not a Suzuki,’” Stockwell recalls. “He thought that I built this motorcycle in my own garage and then slapped a Suzuki emblem on the tank.”
Alas, like many things in life, the backstory and baggage disappear in moments of passion and Stockwell claims that despite the bike’s pudgy 525 pounds, riding the RE5 is pure joy.
“It takes off like a two-stroke, yet it is smooth and does everything well. It is a stupendous motorcycle and if you did the maintenance, it is bulletproof. I know of one RE5 that has been ridden for more than 200,000 miles.”
The RE5’s passing was not dignified. After some minor styling revisions, the company pulled the model from the lineup at the end of 1977. By 1980, dealers who were unlucky enough to still have surplus models were taking most any offer they could get. Rotary Recycle founder Costanzo bought three NOS models at that time and paid $2700 for all three machines, just slightly more than the 1975 MSRP of $2475 for one bike.
Estimated total sales for the Suzuki RE5 range from 6300-6500 units sold. In hindsight, it wasn’t a bad motorcycle; it just wasn’t a better motorcycle, at least not markedly better than the other offerings of the mid ’70’s.
Like a Camel cigarette, it just wasn’t for everybody. CN
