This 1981 Suzuki Katana was unearthed in a chicken pen in Brisbane and arrived in Bundaberg as what Dave refers to as “a bitsa.” As a bloke who’s onto his fourth Katana, he knows a thing or two about the model and, more importantly, has a string of well-connected contacts he can call on when needed. With almost a dozen restorations under his belt and a reputation that has earned Dave the moniker ‘the magician’, the stars began aligning for Scott to finally begin working towards his three-decade old ambition.
Scott owns a smash repairers in Bundaberg in Queensland and met Dave through his work as an automotive glazier. He’s talking about the wire-wheeled E24-spec 1100cc 1981 Suzuki Katana that was released in Australia in mid-’81 and of which only roughly 500 were built. “It came with a motor and a lot of parts that Dave refurbished, but we didn’t know at the time we bought it that it was an SXZ.” “That basket case cost us four thousand dollars!” he says. I asked Scott of all the bikes he could begin an undertaking like this with, why such a basket case? An instrument cluster is perched at the top of a heavily pitted fork, there are mismatched wheels and not a lot else. It’s little more than a dinted tank and a ripped seat sitting atop an empty and tired frame. While we’re talking, I’m looking at a photo Scott sent me of the bike he got his hands on to start the project, and it’s far from anything resembling special. “And we said, ‘let’s make it a special build’.” We said, ‘it’s either going to be a normal build, or it’s a going to be a special build’.
“And I’m pretty anal when it comes to making sure everything’s right, and so’s Dave, and it was about six months in when Dave and I had a good talk. “After the first three months of trying to get everything, we were starting to get out of control and we got to a point where there was no return,” explains Scott, whose mixture of pride and excitement is clearly evident in his voice. Or it may be because Dave is one of the most fastidious and well-connected restorers of 1980s Japanese classics you’re likely to come across. It may be because Scott was finally realising a 30-year-old dream of acquiring and restoring a Katana after the financial realities of a young family forced him to relinquish a Katana he was doing up in his 20s. I t was six months into the restoration of a 1981 Suzuki Katana 1100 when owner Scott Lee and restorer Dave Marett realised they needed to make a decision. He just didn’t know it’d be quite like this For the last 30 years, Scott Lee has known he wanted to restore an original 1981 Suzuki Katana.
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