Suzuki museum in Hamamatsu
More Suzuki machines at the Heartech Plaza

Jeff Alexander, Ph.D. Student in Vancouver, Canada, was kind enough to send us pictures he took when visiting the Suzuki museum in Hamamatsu, Japan. There's hundreds of Suzuki motorcycles and cars dating back to the 50's. Here's a couple of the pictures. Enjoy!

Click on the images for larger format.

	Suzuki museum in Hamamatsu The picture above shows a Suzuki loom. As we know, Michio Suzuki started his career as manufacturer of looming machines; machines that were used for making fabrics for clothes. Michio Suzuki was 22 years old when he constructed his first, pedal-driven wooden loom, and started to sell his product. The year was 1909. In 1952, Suzuki Jidosha Kogyo (Suzuki Loom Manufacturing) started manufacturing motorbikes, under the brand name Colleda. The first models were standard bicycles (push bikes) with small engines attached to it. The green-red bike on the left shows one of these early bikes, a Diamond Free from the early fifties. Apparently it's a special bike, used for showing how durable the Colleda bikes were. "Suzuki's Around the World trip bike" says the sign at the museum. Unfortunately I can only guess the rest of the story. Perhaps one of you readers can tell more about the "trip around the world"? Here's more Suzuki cycle motor info.
	1956 Colleda TT The following picture shows the classic 1956 Colleda TT model, the ancestor of the T20, T250 and the GT250. You don't need to have all too wild imagination to guess that the designer of the bike had been inspired by American car design. Here's more Suzuki Colleda info.
	Winds of change... Hundreds of classic Suzuki bikes bikes in mint condition.
	Barry Sheene's GP racers There's some real classic bikes at the museum. What about these two? Barry Sheene's TR750R Grand Prix racer from the early seventies — or Sheene's 1978 Grand Prix bike RGB700? The Sheene "in action" picture is borrowed from the Mehli-Race website. Update: David de Botton from Sydney, Australia, kindly informed me that the blue and white bike without a fairing is actually a XR20 – 70x64 738,5cc three-cylinder prototype. The project was stopped so they never made a fairing for it. Thank you, David! Here's another picture of the XR20 prototype. Click for larger image.
	More Suzuki racers And there's much more. Tons of winner bikes in a row, from early sixties to the present day. Big board on the wall tell the story of Suzuki Motor Company, from the early cycle motors to today's street-legal racers. I wish I had the opportunity to visit the museum some day. I would mind Suzuki Motor Company offering me a free trip to the museum... Do you read this, the big bosses at Suzuki?

All the photos on this page (unless mentioned otherwise) was sent to me by Allan Tucker, Barbados. The source unknown. If you recognize the pictures and know who has taken them, please let me know about it!

The museum, the Heartech Plaza, is not open to general visitors. It's for Suzuki internal use only. You have to contact Suzuki and be persuade them to open the doors for you if you want to see all the interesting bikes in the museum. Some owners clubs in Japan, RG Gamma, DR, GSX-R and so on, made contacts to SUZUKI, and were permitted to visit the museum. The reports can be found on the internet (in Japanese language) here. The museum has no website and apparently can't be contacted by e-mail either. The postal (snail mail) address of the Heartech Plaza is the following: The Heartech Plaza of Suzuki Motor co, Ltd. 300 Takatsuka, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka-Pref, JAPAN.

More: Photo Gallery

More: Suzuki racing history

More: All Suzuki models


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