The Savage's persona was a bike that stayed out of harm's way, with a torquey engine (although underpowered for its displacement) that made few demands on the rider.

The S40 has larger shaft-driven rivals in the Yamaha V-Star 650 Custom, as well as the Honda Shadow Spirit 750, which boasts its "super-low" 25.7-inch seat height.

[4][23][24][25] Two enduring competitors are motorcycles with air-cooled single-cylinder engines that have been in production even longer than Suzuki's S40: Royal Enfield's Bullet, and Yamaha's SR400.

(652 cc), four-stroke, air-cooled, single overhead camshaft power plant, incorporating a Twin-Swirl Combustion Chamber (TSCC) cylinder head design first used in the Suzuki GSX series motorcycle engines.

[5] In a 2006 road test, Motorcycle Cruiser magazine recorded a quarter mile time of 16.35 sec at 77.2 mph.