Hans A. Muth

I talked about how BMW was not exactly thought of as building beautiful bikes.

And so it's kind of a weird thing that Suzuki decided to turn to a German three-person team led by Hans Muth for Suzuki to build the Suzuki Katana.

And it was a bit controversial in its styling.

Now, Hans Muth, of course, had been the styling lead for BMW for And while the bikes that the Germans had produced were technically impressive, the looks were generally not thought of as highly.

So it's not a surprise that the Katana looks like it could have worn a BMW badge when it was released as a 1981 model.

And much like many of the older BMW models, the Katana now enjoys a resurgence in popularity with many realizing how innovative and groundbreaking some of the early models were.