I, too, have noticed the difference. A quick stop at suzukihayabusa.org is all it takes to see how "the other half lives".
There's a lot of truth in that maturity business, too. I learned that when I was shopping for bikes in the spring of 2003 and was too late to order my first choice, an '04 FJR1300. The local Suzuki dealer told me that while Suzuki does not offer a sport-touring model (which was what I wanted), they had sold their first Hayabusa in 1999 to a 70 year-old retired surgeon who rode the bike 15,000 miles in the first year he owned it and bought another for his wife in 2000!
Ed
There's a lot of truth in that maturity business, too. I learned that when I was shopping for bikes in the spring of 2003 and was too late to order my first choice, an '04 FJR1300. The local Suzuki dealer told me that while Suzuki does not offer a sport-touring model (which was what I wanted), they had sold their first Hayabusa in 1999 to a 70 year-old retired surgeon who rode the bike 15,000 miles in the first year he owned it and bought another for his wife in 2000!
Ed