Personally, I think the bike was designed as a conservative compression large single cylinder price beater competitor to the aging Honda 350. Suzuki wanted something to sell on the low end to fill that market slot that didn't cost a lot of yen to make.
The same molds and dies have cast and stamped a lot of parts over the years for Suzuki. It has always ridden the lowest price point in the Suzuki lineup of street bikes. The Honda 350 is dust now, and the Savage rolls on. I'd say it was a successful marketing/engineering effort.
We like it because we play with it to amuse ourselves. Some make it noiser, some make it more powerful, some try to make it cheaper and easier to own.
It does make a pretty elegant little bobber. It also makes the world's primo get around town go pick it up "wee bagger". There are many bikes that can do "more" than the Savage can, but
absolutely nothing that can do these two jobs better==================
Now, when the 3 little nip engineers were in their engineer's cubby castle screwing off if their boss had banged the door open and roared out at them .....
"You Assho! You treee worthless salary men not leave office until you figure out how to meet new EU graduated license power requirements and new American emission control limits!
(he hits them with his little riding crop repeatedly until they cower submissively over their drafting boards)
You stay until your worthless peckers fall off or you come up with truuuly Yoda cheap solution, you treee worthless dogs!!"
I mean, if you are going to be culturally insensitive, don't muck about when you do it