The styling of the Suzuki Katana still looks somewhat modern even today in 2020. When the prototype was first shown in 1979 it sent a shockwave around the motorcycle world, a world that was used to Japanese superbikes looking a certain way. Interestingly, the secret to the revolutionary design of the Katana lay not in Japan, but in Germany.

Suzuki knew that the Universal Japanese Motorcycle (or UJM) that had worked so well for them along with Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha was beginning to show its age. The fundamental engineering was good, but visually the motorcycles lacked panache, they often looked somewhat the same, and Suzuki wanted to break the mould.