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It's not even close to apples-to-apples. It's not even apples-to-oranges. It's more like apples-to-one of those little wild strawberries that's kind of sour.
I'm a big proponent of the V-Strom 650. I happily put 40,000 miles on one. I recommend it to anyone who wants an ADV-style bike and has a small budget. But having owned both, I can honestly say that the Tiger 800 is WAY more bike than the Wee-Strom. All stock components are far better, it makes 50% more power, it rides and handles better, and it's much more fun. It's very much in a different class.
The Wee and the Versys are great bikes for what they are, and I still think they're among the best values on the market today, but there's no doubt that they're budget bikes.
Well, the scuttlebutt for a few years now has been that the 1000 twin is being phased out because Suzuki can't get it to meet more stringent emissions regs. That's apparently why the V-Strom 1000 is no longer available in Europe. So they're just trying to milk as much more money as they can out of it over here until our emissions regs kill it off too.
Of course, that does beg the question of why Suzuki hasn't brought out a DL1000 replacement with a new engine. Maybe they still will; that would explain why they stuck with the same frame on the updated Wee-Strom instead of transitioning it to a Gladius-derived frame, which would have made more sense for that bike if it's only going to be available as a 650.
--mark