Suzuki 125 Stinger

Welcome, readers from the Suzi GS website! I just discovered that a number of you are fans of Tiddlerosis, although most of the GS models are too large to be featured here. Please allow me to present a few details about this site. I hope you will continue to tell your friends about it.

I got in on the ground floor of The Sixties Tiddler Revolution. I had friends with many Honda, Yamaha, Cushman, Vespa, and other brands from 1960 onward. I learned to ride on a 1960 H-D Super 10, my first scooter was a 1957 Allstate Cruisaire and my first real motorcycle was a Yamaha YG-1. I lived in Mississippi until the mid-'70's, so all my experiences and dealer availabilities came from that region. This meant that my exposure to Suzis was limited in the early days. I always had considerably more direct contact with the other Big Three.

I began collecting brochures in 1962, and I often feature photos from my collection here. This is one such photo. You can see where many years ago I punched holes in the top to put my collection in a notebook. Boy, have I ever regretted doing that! The only thing worse I did was to actually scribble prices on some of them. Aaaarrgggghhh! Many readers have sent me more photos, and I occasionally post these at Tiddlerosis. The big problem is getting large, sharp, bright, perfect photos of the rare models. Quite often a particular model might be showcased just because that is the one of which I have a high quality photo. Any photos readers wish to send are always welcome!

Posting to Tiddlerosis is something that I do sporadically. I write books and have several other blogs, too, so my time tends to get spread quite thinly. Right now I am working on a large volume about politics and economics that I hope to get out early next year, so you may see very few new posts here over the next few months. NIAFS is my main blog, so you can keep up with whatever I am doing over there. If any of you are also interested in classic sports cars or recreational boats, you may want to check out some of my books. In case any of you are wondering, the only reason I have never published a Tiddlerosis book is the difficulty of obtaining quality classic photos and the permission to use them. Maybe someday I'll find a way....

The Suzuki Stinger was one of the company's flashier, and more unusual, models. I picked this model to feature here more or less at random. I know very little about the Stinger, and I am not even sure that I have ever seen one on the street. The one at the dealership where I picked up this brochure may be the only one I have actually seen, but I simply cannot remember for sure. I can tell you that I obtained this particular brochure from a dealership, one of the first Suzuki dealerships to which I had access at the time. All of my earlier Suzi brochures were ordered by mail directly from the U. S. distributor. The Stinger was a very impressive machine, compared to its competition, and I have always been surprised at how rare it has always been. The styling is nearly perfect, with its separate instruments, upswept pipes, crossbrace bars, simple, triangular frame, long, racy tank, trim headlamp and fenders, and boatloads of chrome! The claimed top speed of 75 mph was somewhat high for a 125; I wonder if it would really do that with a full-sized American on board? There were several Suzukis back then that caught my eye, and the Stinger was certainly one of them.

See also: Suzuki Sport 80
Suzuki Colt/Maverick
Suzuki X-6 Hustler
Lee's 125 Stinger Restoration