Milwaukee Eight Lays the Smackdown on a Hayabusa! (Video)
Suzuki’s high-powered Hayabusa may be a drag-race darling, but it’s time to step aside for the new king of the road.
There’s no question that we all love Harleys here. However, I’m sure that even the most grizzled old die-hard Harley fanatic will admit that a Suzuki Hayabusa is one of the fastest things on two wheels.
Imagine our shock, then, when we saw this YouTube video posted to our forums by JeremyJustice. It appears that the whole online Harley-Davidson community is shaken to its core from this video, as this is one of the most active threads in recent memory.
In the video, we see a black Milwaukee Eight-powered Road King face off against a white Suzuki Hayabusa. The Hayabusa is nothing short of a legendary machine, capable of running the quarter mile in the high 9 second range.
When it was released back in 1999, the Hayabusa was simply the fastest production motorcycle in the world, with a top speed approaching 200 miles per hour. In short, it should have no problem wiping the floor with a heavy Harley cruiser, right? Wrong.
As the bikes stage, we can tell that the Road King isn’t exactly stock, with drag bars, a 2-into-1 exhaust, and a modified intake that we can’t get a really good look at. What we can see clearly, however, are that the hard plastic saddlebags are still bolted in place! It looks like whoever is riding isn’t too worried about aerodynamics or weight savings.
When the bikes take off, it’s quite a shock to see the Road King not only jump ahead with a holeshot, but lift the front wheel off the ground to boot! The Hayabusa never catches up, and the Road King finishes somewhere in the mid-9s.
According to JeremyJustice, the motorcycle belongs to Jason Broski, and was built by Ward Performance. Both bikes in the video run in the “stock wheelbase class,” which means that high-powered sportbikes like the Hayabusa aren’t permitted to run extended swingarms that help out with traction and weight transfer, keeping the front wheel firmly planted on the ground during fast launches.
While there may be heavily modified, stretched, turbocharged Hayabusas out there that could hang with the Ward Performance Road King, we’re inclined to say that, finally the model has lived up to its name. All hail the mighty Road King!
