Yamaha Whips Up Some More Visual Biking Excitement

The occasion to get Kajikawa may have been to inaugurate an additional new facility at its existing Surajpur plant and also to instill more confidence among its dealers. However, what really must have set the tone was to also send a message across to everyone in the Yamaha family and to motorcyclists in the country that this is an all new Yamaha trying to make up not just for lost ground but also not wanting to repeat its mistakes of the past.

This it did by announcing yet one more variant based on its FZ16 series which mimics the large Fazers in Europe, not in displacement but certainly in its looks and overall makeup. Yamaha terms this variant as ideal for two-wheeled touring and while mechanically it doesn't differ from the other FZs, this 153cc single-cylinder bike certainly has the right scaled down looks of the larger 1000cc and 600cc four-cylinder Fazers which are hot sellers in Europe. The adoption of the large squat fairing with the distinctive twin headlamp look sported by the large Yamahas is evident while the small Perspex screen is neatly sculpted in keeping with the overall lines of the needle nose fairing which sweeps itself back to almost the full length of the tank. The riding position has been reconfigured by tweaking the handlebar to endow the rider with a more relaxed posture.

Everything else on the Fazer remains the same as on the other bikes in the FZ series (the FZ16 and the FZ-S) and this bike should be in showrooms all over the country within a week. Available in four new colours - electric blue, midnight black, lava red and flaming orange, the bike is priced at Rs. 72,000/00 ex-showroom, Delhi which for a bike of its class might seem pricey. Yamaha however have to be applauded for keeping the enthusiasm bubbling and we certainly see activity from the firm - unlike as in the past - even though the price the biker pays seems to be of a high order.

Yamaha also took the occasion to release its bristling with high tech YZF R15 in four all new colours. This is something which is a refresher trend for a bike which is the costliest from the Indo-Jap bike makers in this country and finally we have this extreme track special machine in colours which hark back to famous Yamaha racing livery sported by the likes of Kenny Roberts and Giacomo Agostini. The yellow, white and black comes closest to the Yamaha America racing colours (though without the black blocks) while the red and white variant was of a type which was a short-lived Yamaha Europe race colour. A blue, white and black turnout was the third livery as on the present day Yamaha race bikes in Europe while the fourth and last model came in all-black with a white band on fairing and tank.

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Earlier in the day, Takashi Kajikawa inaugurated the new facility at Yamaha's Surajpur plant. This plant now has a total of three assembly lines and four engine assembly lines, the additional one catering exclusively for its export models. This new plant brings capacity up to 600,000 units annually and Yamaha according to Yukimine Tsuji, CE) & managing director of India Yamaha Motor Pvt. Ltd., this could be further enhanced to make up to a million units per annum. While this may look ambitious at the moment, given Yamaha made 1.5 lakh units in calendar 2008, in the period January to June 2008, the company rode on the success of the FZ16 to post a production figure of 90,000 units. Overall production and sales projections for calendar 2009, we feel could be just about the 200,000 unit mark.