New Yamaha Sportbike Announcement 5/18

Fortnine is the company he works for. His birth name is Ryan Kluftinger. Before the company changed its name to Fortnine the name was Canada's Motorcycle. You can still see videos on Youtube for them from 2015.

 

This will cause a lot of “bent frame” totals at the auction!

 

https://youtu.be/Fzkx8AtRcnE

Guess reviews are coming out now, Renny does great reviews.

Twins cup aside, looks like a winner for Yamaha. Given how successful the MT-07 and Tenere have been, I don't see how this won't sell just as well.

 

1969 Yamaha R3. For the math challenged, that's 52 years ago.

 

Cool. I have a 69 DS6. Same color

 

^^^^ @Gorilla George

pay attention Chris...

 

He already spent it all on guns.

 

Man, I miss Haga.

 

Looks like it still has the shitty transmission!

 

Very disappointing to call an under powered twin an R7, like a bad joke or something. Yeah you do not want none of my badass R7, it will go 120mph down hill M-fer.

 

All reviews to date seem to be universal in feedback, no surprise there of course:

- great value at $9k
- QS and transmission are clunky
- fun bike, but damn you Yamaha for not giving it 10-15 more ponies.
- brakes are decent spec but not great, forks are okay but shock is barely passable even ramped to 7/7 on preload.
- If you liked the looks of the R6/R1 you'll like this is as it's a clone of the R6 baring the headlight.

"R7-S" would have been enough to keep us old buggers happy about the defiling of the R7 pedigree.

 

I am guessing Yamaha gives no fucks about whether old buggers are happy or unhappy.

 

Newsflash for the "purists" Yamaha owns the name "R-7" and they can make whatever the fuck they want and call it whatever the fuck they want. its says R-7 on the sides so its a fucking R-7.

Just because it doesn't align with the 12 people here that think Yamaha gives two fucks, I bet the same people also think Rossi is gonna win again.

 

Id bet the 'R7' name is a net positive for purchases. They are getting way more new customers that want something more sporty than an MT-07 by distancing from "MT/FZ". And they've lost very very few customers by reusing a historical name.

 

Nobody under 35 years old knows what an OW-02 or R7 is and Yamaha says their target demographic for the new bike is 19-26 year olds. Their reasoning can't be faulted in that sense and they are just pissed off that 86% of R6 sales the past couple years have been used bikes being sold to riders which puts zero dollars into Hamamatsu's piano making pockets. I guess $9K will open up a lot more new purchase potential for buyers but I'm also willing to bet a lot of that would be poached from riders who previously might have bought an MT-07 or R3 anyways. They'll cannibilize their own lineup with buyers just buying a different Yamaha than they already would have.

I'm not buying one as the ergo's are almost identical to an R6 and I'm annoyed they couldn't have thrown $500 towards the engine and given it another 10 reliable ponies. I bet for $9.5k they'd actually sell more as it's a performance boost and then would be close enough to the Ape to justify the cost savings.

 

Calipers appear to be the same as every radial mount R6. They used the same piston diameters on the radial mount calipers as well, which were also on the FZ07. So that means the same pads can be used on every year R6 and FZ07.

I believe they'll be sufficient.

 

I’m surprised they haven’t kicked the R1 further upmarket to make room for an R9, like Ducati has done with its Panigale line. I know Yamaha isn’t Ducati, but I believe the R1 name has enough cache that there would be buyers for a up spec R1.

 

You mean an R1M? The "up-spec" R1 they've produced for the past 6 years or something closer to Fabio's M1?

 

298mm rotors vs 320mm rotors, different pads (easy fix I know), and ABS that's not able to be dis-engaged (technically speaking of course - a fuse is an easy fix but then there's a warning on the dash).

Reviews are saying how light the bike is but I'm not really seeing it:

414lbs wet with a tiny 13L tank is only 6lbs lighter than a '17 CBR1000RR with the same 13L of gas in the tank (14lb weight difference total if both are topped off).

Flickable - I bet it is, light, not so much given it's 15lbs heavier than a KTM Duke 890R and 7-8lbs heavier than a Triumph Street Triple.