Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Next in our series of interviews with the Communication Plaza’s restoration team is Ikuo Nakamura, a former road racer and long-time Yamaha test rider. He is a relative newcomer to the team, but brings with him a wealth of wrenching know-how and experience he honed maintaining his racebike back in the day. Still, he finds new lessons hidden in the engineering of the old Yamahas he works hard to restore today.    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #classic #motorcycles #restoration #museum #preservation #design #industrialdesign #history #manufacturing #engineering #technology #craftsmanship 

=== Days Gone By===   Days Spent with Cars – 6. A Sports Car Known to Few    While working on these projects, our personal relationships with that carmaker grew closer and more frequent, and as we consistently built more and more parts and prototypes, they began to recognize Yamaha’s technological expertise. Then, it came—a full-on joint development project to create a new sports car from the ground up. We were ecstatic; we had finally returned to building sports cars!    The specifications for the car were as follows:  It would be powered by the 2,000cc, DOHC Yamaha YX-80 engine and use the chassis from an existing sports car, but with the suspension redesigned for improved high-speed driving. The styling would be handled by a designer from Europe working for the carmaker on commission at the time. His avant-garde design included pop-up headlights, a first for a car from Japan.    While the carmaker handled the overall layout, Yamaha worked out the details of the design based on it and built the prototypes. Because the overall layout was well thought out and nearly finalized—and the fact that we used some existing parts—the prototype car was complete only ten months after we began working on the details of the design. This prototype was to be the automaker’s first true sports car and it was scheduled to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. However, issues arose and it was postponed indefinitely, never seeing the eyes of the public.    And so, aside from those of us involved with the project, I doubt many people even knew this sports car ever existed. After less than two years, our business partnership came to an end.    <ends>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #cars #automotive #manufacturing #engineering #history 

===What the Japanese Bayberry Trees Have Seen===   21. Business Plans    On September 10th, Managing Executive Officer Ogura held a no-nonsense meeting with a group of managers to discuss how we would make our motorcycles a viable business. The topics were financing issues, profit planning, our sales structure and more.  The reason I wrote that the meeting was “no-nonsense” was because the company’s financial situation at the time was anything but rosy. In fact, finances were so bleak that the group was forced to consider selling some of the company’s real estate assets to raise the funds needed to start motorcycle production.    At the time, the company had only sufficient assets to produce between 150 and 200 units monthly. At those low production volumes, it was all too clear that not only would the cost of each bike be unfeasibly high, but also every sale would result in a loss of tens of thousands of yen.    The decision had already been made to establish an independent company to produce motorcycles, but how long could Nippon Gakki shoulder the burden of a company constantly in the red? In the end, Nippon Gakki would indeed have to cover the losses, and that raised the next question: How long would it last? It was a conundrum that seemed everlasting.    Photo: Aerial shot of Nippon Gakki’s main factory the following year (1955)    <continues>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #racing #manufacturing #engineering #history #design

The next model feature from the Communication Plaza’s previous Historical Models Demonstration Run is from nearly 60 years ago: the YDS-3C. It was a scrambler model for overseas markets based on the high-performance YDS-3 and drew attention in America's then-emerging off-road bike segment. It featured an Autolube-equipped 2-stroke, in-line 2-cylinder engine with excellent power, reliability and durability.    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #classic #historical #cars #supercar #motorcycles #racing #history #manufacturing #engineering #design 

Happy Yamaha Day! Today marks our 69th birthday!       In our fourth year of operating this official account, we've reached nearly 85,000 followers!      Thank you very much for your continued interest in Yamaha Motor, whether it is for our trademark motorcycles and outboards, our long history of innovation and design, or for any of the many other businesses, services, and activities we provide and conduct.       From President Yoshihiro Hidaka:  “2024 marks the seventh year for us to celebrate Yamaha Day, and we see Yamaha Motor distributors and subsidiaries in countries around the world putting on grander events year after year. I think we can say that July 1st has become firmly established as a special day on which we think about as well as celebrate the Yamaha brand. I remember feeling Kando myself every time I have heard the news of what the global Yamaha family is planning or putting on for Yamaha Day, so let me say a big thank you to everyone working to again make the day a special one.”      Please look forward to hearing more exciting news and developments from us here in Japan!      #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #YamahaDay2024 #motorcycles #outboards #robotics #manufacturing #engineering #history #design #anniversary #birthday 

=== Days Gone By===  Days Spent with Cars – 5. Setbacks & Comebacks      So with this and similar failures, the Yasukawa Research Lab was disbanded in February 1962 and absorbed into the company’s engine department. Thereafter, the only project on which work continued focused on creating an improved version of the Tice Engine. In the end, the two sports cars our bold dream led us to build and the improved-but-unfinished Tice Engine were all that remained—an all the more sad conclusion to what we had started.    In November of that year, the two-pronged setback of a scooter model that flopped and a contraction in the motorcycle market forced Yamaha Motor to downsize, resulting in the Yamaha Technological Research Institute also closing. With the situation dire, many felt that the company just didn’t have the leeway anymore to continue work on car-related projects. We’d done so much and worked so hard to get started in the automotive industry, and it would be such a disappointment for everything to end like this.    So, I made a personal request to President Kawakami to allow us to continue our work. The president also wanted to somehow keep our aspirations alive, so company management went through the banks to see if one of Japan’s carmakers was interested in using our technology. It was likely thanks to the talks with the banks that one carmaker sent the head of their technology arm and other executives to visit Yamaha to see the cars and engines we’d built.    Seeing what we’d built in person is what likely convinced them, and we began drawing up the contract and specifics for a business partnership. A development department to specifically serve as the point of contact for work based on the partnership was set up at Yamaha. Executive Officer Ono was general manager and I was the department manager. Much of the team was made up of former members of the Yasukawa Research Lab that had been reassigned to work with us. We had been able to save our work on automobiles and secure its future.    The first jobs we worked on included designing a V8 engine, designing a prototype convertible top, and testing to see if installing our 2,000cc DOHC YX-80 engine—the improved version of the Tice Engine—could result in new models gaining a different character. In other words, most of the work we did was early-stage development.    Photo: Yamaha Motor’s first scooter, the SC-1, was loaded with advanced technologies, but plagued by mechanical issues due to its complexity.    <ends>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #cars #automotive #manufacturing #engineering #history 

===What the Japanese Bayberry Trees Have Seen===  20. Testing the Prototype  <continued>    The second prototype was completed on the 7th, and a meeting was held the following day about how we should test it along a route circling Lake Hamana. At the time, 10,000 km tests were considered very rare in the industry, but we had planned to conduct one from the very beginning. It was all from our determination to produce motorcycles of the highest quality.    To complete the test as quickly as possible, we recruited the company guards to ride the prototype through the day and night since they worked in shifts regularly. However, we had to lay out a smorgasbord of very detailed rules for them to follow while they were out; it was to make sure the test started and ended safely.    On the afternoon of the 8th, President Kawakami and ten others made a preliminary examination of the test route. When they were done, they determined that it took around an hour and forty-five minutes to complete a single 65 km lap. Moreover, they’d returned covered from head to foot in white dust—not surprising since the roads were still unpaved back then.    And it was on this day that President Kawakami gave the formal command to Manufacturing Division General Manager Aisa: “Let’s start producing motorcycles!” Until then the project had been run by the Technology Division, but its management now officially shifted to the Manufacturing Division.    <ends>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #racing #manufacturing #engineering #history #design   

If you haven't heard the news yet, Yamaha Motor and Honda are working with Netflix on a new original anime series set in Tokyo in the year 2126. The city has been entirely transformed by AI into the ideal metropolis—a utopia on Earth. At least, that’s what it appears to be on the surface...    Head here to see more: https://lnkd.in/gy2qnfVu    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #Netflix #ONA #TokyoOverride #anime #Japan #Tokyo #motorcycles #future #AI

Yamaha Introduces Y-AMT: A new dimension of sports riding. Yamaha has always been a leader in motorcycle innovation, driven by the desire to create a more immersive and satisfying riding experience. This passion is fueled by the Jin-Ki Kanno philosophy, which emphasizes the feeling of oneness between rider and machine. Now, the Yamaha Automated Manual Transmission (Y-AMT) takes that connection to the next level. This advanced gear-shifting technology allows riders to fully focus on enjoying the sports performance offered by their motorcycle, by delivering consistently linear shifts to create the most engaging riding experience with the choice of a slick, finger operated manual shift or a two-mode fully automatic transmission. With a closer and more refined connection to the brain than the feet, the hands are one of the most tactile and powerful tools the human body has. Shifting by hand alone, as opposed to a foot-and-hand combination, is not only quicker but requires less thinking time, allowing riders to hyper-focus on throttle and brake application, lean angle, body position and tyre grip levels to intensify the ride. Yamaha has a history of automatic shifting advancements, like the YCC-S system used in the FJR1300. Y-AMT takes it a step further, offering a game-changing experience for all riders. Learn more about Y-AMT: https://brnw.ch/Y_AMT

We are in the middle of sharing a series of in-depth articles and interviews about the Communication Plaza’s work to acquire and restore historical Yamaha models. For people who may have missed the first few of these, this issue of our newsletter provides a general overview of why we began this work and what it encompasses. We’ll upload more restoration-related content in the coming weeks!     #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #classic #motorcycles #restoration #museum #preservation #design #industrialdesign #history #manufacturing #engineering #technology #craftsmanship