The bike's light feeling is matched with an unfamiliar companion of feeling pretty planted. It has a very balanced feel, and the layout seemed plenty roomy, allowing the rider to get anywhere he needs to be.-Jimmy Lewis/5'10"/180 lb/Vet Pro
Heads Up
After our initial flogging on the new RM-Z450, we thought it'd be fun to stack it up against the other 450s of 2008.
Sort of a quasi-shootout comparison of sorts.
The RM-Z easily feels like a shootout contender. It has a solid chassis and suspension feel that instilled confidence.
It jumped light like a 250F and delivered one of the most usable helpings of power we've ever experienced. Would it stand up next to our shootout winner, the Honda CRF450R?
Yes and no. When you hit the track on the Honda and Suzuki back-to-back, you'll see that the RM-Z feels a bit underpowered. That's not a bad thing, by itself. Who needs more power than the RM-Z cranks out? Nobody. But when that power is delivered through a product like a CRF, then it's almost like cheating. The gear-position ignition mapping takes care of the Honda's aggressive power nature the same way the RM-Z's EFI system does. But the red bike's motor is just too impressive to ignore. The RM-Z is more like the YZ in power delivery and smooth like the KTM.
Handling is a personal affair, and the RM-Z is a great bike to get along with. Similarly the Honda keeps an aggressive edge, especially in the fork. The bike is confident in holding itself up and likes to be pushed, great for a true race bike. Similar to the CRF here, the RM-Z can take almost as much pushing, but it also feels like it gets better traction front and rear, like the KTM. And the RM-Z outperforms the CRF on all smaller bumps eliminating most of the feeling to your hands. In comparison, the RM-Z is a sweeter ride on the wrists. But when the bumps get big the CRF shines, like it did all shootout long. Nevertheless, both of these bikes take a back seat to our favorite suspension found on the Yamaha.
The RM-Z isn't going to knock off the Honda this year. But it's scary close for such a revolutionary model. It finds a place between the two camps of 450s. Kawasaki and Honda seem to be the aggressive guys, and Yamaha and KTM take the smoother approach. While the Suzuki isn't a ripper like green and red, it seems to be a step up in aggression, depending on how you choose to turn the throttle, compared to blue and orange. We'll have to see how the bike holds up in the durability game as well since we actually got our first test bike stuck in gear at the introduction after only two hours of riding, earning a strange look from the Suzuki engineers (evidently it was a broken shift fork-something Suzuki hadn't seen before on this bike).
Where do you fit in? Aggressive? Smooth? Yellow, blue, green, orange or red? Or maybe, just maybe, you really hate jets. And for that the RM-Z is all you.