These bike-vs-car drag races can sometimes get a bit tiring. I mean, the bike always wins unless it’s some kind of supercar, or a tired old motorcycle, right? Most of the time, any sport bike can toast any production car off the line and it’s not even interesting.

So you’d think that’d be the case here. I mean, it’s a Suzuki Hayabusa for Pete’s sake. What production car is going to smoke a Hayabusa? A Jeep Cherokee? Are you kidding?

Well it turns out, this isn’t any old Jeep Cherokee. It’s a Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, which is a total beast and reportedly puts out 707 (yes, seven hundred seven) horsepower. That’s interesting! It also costs nearly ninety thousand dollars, and its published 0-60 is 3.5 seconds so it is no slouch.

But wait, let’s do some math.

The curb weight of that Jeep is 5,363lbs so it is no lightweight. The curb weight of any given Hayabusa is around 585lbs. In order to keep this math on the simple side, I’m going to say YES, torque absolutely has a bunch to do with a launch from a dead stop, but a little power-to-weight calculation never hurt anybody. Let’s go with published numbers, the Jeep at 707 and the ‘Busa at 194. Based solely on horsepower, the Jeep’s power to weight is .132hp/lb rounding up. The Hayabusa’s is .331. This difference is huge… until.

Say the driver of the Jeep weighs 200 lbs. That knocks its ratio back to .127. Let’s give the motorcyclist the same estimation and that number drops to 0.247.

It still ought not to be too much of a contest, and should definitely be a tie: both of these vehicles have a rated 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds. Consider though, that all the Jeep driver has to do is mash the throttle to the floor and hold the steering wheel still. In contrast, all the rider needs to do is… um… know how to ride a motorcycle? Be in the correct gear? What is he even doing? Did he start out in third? Is this his seventeenth race of the day and his clutch is, by this point, completely roasted? Or maybe he’s never done this before and doesn’t know how a drag race works?

Bad job, Suzuki rider. Bad job.

Source: YouTube

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