IT’S come to something when a magazine seems to do better at creating new Suzukis than Suzuki.

You would be forgiven for having taken that impression away from the Eicma show in Milan last week, where this stunning Suzuki Katana concept debuted.

While the ‘Katana 3.0 concept’ was on Suzuki’s stand, no doubt leading some to hope they might be looking at a potential future model, it was the work of Italian magazine Motociclismo.

It’s a GSX-S1000F faithfully restyled by Rodolfo Frascoli (designer of various Moto Guzzis, Triumph’s 2005-on Speed Triple 1050 and Tiger 1050 among many others) and built by Engines Engineering to ape the 1980s classic Katana GSX1100.

Kawasaki’s Z1-based Z9000RS shows the potential to appeal to both dedicated traditional-style motorcycle fans and nostalgic 40/50-something riders by meeting in the middle. This concept surely points to how Suzuki could do the same by reviving a classic name of its own.

But the only real new offering on the stand was the SV650X, a madeover SV650 already seen in Tokyo.

Suzuki had us going briefly this morning with a press release about a new GSX-F1000F edition - until we realised it just had new matt black paint and a black exhaust, along with a new name: the GSX-S1000FZ Phantom.

The GSX-S1000FZ Phantom