Oh well, stick it into first gear and….Whooeee! Yikes! Cancel my Rhumba lessons! Ringgg-Ringgg-it seemed to rev kinda quick like. So I climbed aboard the Halloween colored motorcycle and booted it to life. When we got the bike back to Rick’s house in the hilly section of Silverlake, Rick offered to let me ride the Cyclone up and down the street a few times to see what I thought about it. “Hmm, another wimp,” I thought to myself, “a non-hacker, trials bike material, a mini-trail pilot. He mumbled something under his breath that sort of sounded like “You’ll find out,” and then he limped back into his house. I’m buying it!”Īs we loaded the Cyclone into Rick’s truck and the guy in plaster counted his $20 bills, I asked him how he broke his leg. When Rick got back, his eyes were as big as cue balls. Rick clicked it into gear, and went quickly down the alley in a haze of blue CCI smoke. The Cyclone sounded like a real race bike exhaust crackling from its long black open stinger. “Can I start it up?” Rick asked, to which the owner replied “Sure, you can take it down the alley out back too if you want.” The seller seemed agreeable, so Rick started it on the third kick, and carefully made his way to the alley behind the house. There was truth in Suzuki’s attempt to play up the TM400 in its ad campaigns: It did indeed take a lot of nerve to ride the explosive TM400!Rick walked around the bike, poked and prodded it in a few places, sat on it and bounced it up and down-you know, the standard bike buying dance. Seemed like it’d only been ridden a couple times, at most. The knobbies even still had those little rubber whiskers on ‘em. It didn’t seem to have much wear and tear on it for a two-year-old dirt bike. It was a very pretty bike, with its black motor, plastic fenders and alloy rims. So we went out to the back yard, and there it was, an orange and black 1971 Suzuki TM400 Cyclone, sitting in the driveway. Why was he whispering, both Rick and I wondered? Maybe someone was asleep?
He motioned us inside and closed the screen door behind us. When we pulled up to the tidy little house on San Fernando Road in Sylmar, and were greeted at the front door by a big guy with a giant cast on his right leg and bandages on both elbows. We’d heard stories of how fast and dangerous the Cyclone was, but we poo-poohed these rumors as most likely the ramblings of squids and turkeys that couldn’t handle the raw power of an open-class machine. We called up the seller, who lived in Sylmar, and quickly boogied on over in Rick’s 1963 F250 Ford pick-up with tie downs in hand. Rick wanted a big-bore machine that he could feel at home on after all those years of eating dust on his puny 175.Īfter a few minutes of looking, in the 1971 advertisement section of Cycle News in bold type, we found an ad for a slightly used 1971 Suzuki TM400 Cyclone for the unbelievably low price of $500. STORY BY MATT CUDDY.Īhh, spring time, when a man’s fancy turns to love…īack in the spring of 1973 my riding buddy Rick had finally wore out his CT1 Yamaha, and he was looking for love in the want ads of Cycle News. Vintage bike guru Matt Cuddy reminds us why the TM in Suzuki’s TM400 Cyclone model designation probably stood for “Throw Me.” Swathed in orange, the 1971 Suzuki TM400 Cyclone had a rather demure look about it, but the color was appropriate nevertheless: The TM quickly turned from coach to pumpkin as soon as you hammered the throttle.
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