Yamaha Motor Company

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Type	Public
Industry	Automotive
Founded	July 1, 1955
Headquarters	Iwata, Shizuoka, Japan
Area served	Global
Key people	Hiroyuki Yanagi, President & Representative Director
Products	Motorcycles, Commuter Vehicles & Scooters, Recreational Vehicles, Boats, Marine Engines, Snowmobiles, Personal Watercraft, Electrically Power Assisted Bicycles, Automobile Engines, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Golf Cars, Power Products, Pools, Compact Industrial Robots, Wheelchairs, Parts including Apparel, Helmets
Revenue	US$12 billion (2005)
Operating income	US$900 million (2005)
Net income	US$550 million (2005)
Employees	39,300 (2005)
Parent	Yamaha Corporation
Subsidiaries	Minarelli MBK
Website	Yamaha Motor Global

Yamaha Motor Company Limited (ヤマハ発動機株式会社, Yamaha Hatsudōki KK, IPA: [jamaha] /ˈjɑːməhɑː/), is a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company. Yamaha Motor is part of Yamaha Corporation and its headquarter is located in Iwata, Shizuoka. Along with expanding Yamaha Corporation into the world's biggest piano maker, then Yamaha CEO Genichi Kawakami took Yamaha into the field of motorized vehicles on July 1, 1955. The company's intensive research into metal alloys for use in acoustic pianos had given Yamaha wide knowledge of the making of lightweight, yet sturdy and reliable metal constructions. This knowledge was easily applied to the making of metal frames and motor parts for motorcycles. Yamaha Motor produces motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, boats, marine engines including outboards, automobile engines, personal watercraft and snowmobiles.

The Yamaha corporate logo is composed of three tuning forks placed on top of each other in a triangular pattern.

In 2000, Toyota and Yamaha Corporation made a capital alliance in which Toyota paid Yamaha Corporation ¥10.5 billion for a 5 per cent share in Yamaha Motor Company, while Yamaha and Yamaha Motor each bought 500,000 shares of Toyota stock in return.

Yamaha Motor Company was founded by Torakusu Yamaha (in Japanese 山葉 寅楠 Yamaha Torakusu); 山葉 Yamaha means "mountain leaf".

Yamaha Motor divisions

See also: List of Yamaha products

• Motorcycles — Sport bikes, Star Cruiser bikes, Trail bikes, Road racers and Motocrossers
• Commuter Vehicles, including scooters
• Recreational Vehicles — All-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles
• Boats — Powerboats, sailboats, utility boats and custom boats
• Marine Engines — Outboard motors, electric marine motors, marine diesel engines and stern drives
• Personal watercraft
• Electric bicycles
• Automobile engines
• Industrial-use Unmanned helicopters
• Golf cars
• Power Products — generators, multipurpose engines, water pumps and snow throwers
• Swimming pools, watersliders and pool-related equipment
• Intelligent machinery, including compact industrial robots
• Electric wheelchairs and wheelchair electric drive units
• Yamaha parts and accessories, apparel, cycle helmets and motor oil
• Industrial robots and surface mounters

Key products

Motorcycles

See also: List of Yamaha motorcycles

Yamaha XS650 vertical-twin

Yamaha's first motorcycle was the 1 YA-1, which had a 125 cc, single-cylinder two-stroke engine. It was launched in February 1955 and the bike won its first race, the Mount Fuji Ascent Race, in July 1955. Yamaha continued producing two-stroke engines until it launched the XS-1 in 1969, with a 650 cc two-cylinder four-stroke engine, using expertise that it gained doing engine development work for Toyota. In 1979, the XT500 won the first Paris-Dakar Rally.

In 1995, Yamaha announced the creation of Star Motorcycles, a new brand name for its cruiser series of motorcycles in the American market. In other markets, Star motorcycles are sold under the Yamaha brand.

Today, Yamaha produces scooters from 50 to 500 cc, and a range of motorcycles from 50 to 1,900 cc, including cruiser, sport touring, sport, dual-sport, and off-road.

Racing

See also: Yamaha Motor Racing

Two-time Grand Championship winner Kenny Roberts at the 1981 German Grand Prix.

In motorcycle racing Yamaha has won 36 world championships, including 3 in MotoGP and 9 in the preceding 500 cc two-stroke class, and 1 in World Superbike. Yamaha riders include Giacomo Agostini, Bob Hannah, Heikki Mikkola, Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Jeremy McGrath, Stefan Merriman, Phil Read, Chad Reed, Ben Spies, James Stewart and currently Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi.

The Yamaha YZ450F won the AMA Supercross Championship two years in a row, in 2008 with Chad Reed, and 2009 James Stewart. Yamaha was the first to build a production monoshock motocross bike (1975 for 250 and 400, 1976 for 125) and one of the first to have a water-cooled motocross production bike (1977 in works bikes, 1981 in off-the-shelf bikes).

Since 1962, Yamaha made production road racing Grand Prix motorcycles that any licensed road racer could purchase. In 1970, non-factory privateer teams dominated the 250 cc World Championship with Great Britain's Rodney Gould winning the title on a Yamaha TD2.

Yamaha also sponsors several professional ATV riders in several areas of racing, such as cross country racing and motocross. Yamaha has had success in cross country with their YFZ450, ridden by Bill Ballance, winning 9 straight titles since 2000. Yamaha's other major rider, Traci Cecco, has ridden the YFZ450 to 7 titles, with the first in 2000. In ATV motocross, Yamaha has had success with Dustin Nelson and Pat Brown, both who race the YFZ450. Pat Brown's best season was a 3rd place title in 2007, while Nelson has had two 1st place titles in the Yamaha/ITP Quadcross, one in 2006 and the other in 2008.

Yamaha produced Formula One engines from 1989 to 1997, initially for the Zakspeed team, in 1992 for the Jordan 192, and from 1993 onwards for Tyrrell. These never won a race, but drivers including Damon Hill, Ukyo Katayama, Mark Blundell and Andrea de Cesaris scored some acceptable results with them.

Automobile engines

Yamaha-built DOHC V6 Ford Taurus SHO engine

Yamaha has built engines for other manufacturers' vehicles beginning with the development and production of the Toyota 2000GT (1967) with the Toyota Motor Corporation. Also, the cylinder head from the Toyota 4AGE engine was developed by Yamaha Motor Corporation and was built at Toyota's Shimayama plant alongside the 4A and 2A engines. In 1984, executives of the Yamaha Motor Corporation signed a contract with the Ford Motor Company to develop, produce, and supply compact 60° 3.0 Liter DOHC V6 engines for transverse application for the 1989–'95 Ford Taurus SHO. From 1993 to 1995, the SHO engine was produced in 3.0 and 3.2 Liter versions. Yamaha jointly designed the 3.4 Liter DOHC V-8 engine with Ford for the 1996–'99 SHO.

Yamaha also tunes engines for other manufacturers, Toyota being one of them. Yamaha logos are, for instance, found on the Toyota S engines.

Snowmobiles

Yamaha Phazer snowmobile

In 2010, Yamaha was the only snowmobile manufacturer to use four-stroke engines across its range. In Canada though, there are still three models that Yamaha manufactures that are still two-stroke. They are the Bravo, VK 540 and the Venture XL. Yamaha had introduced four-strokes to their line-up in 2003, and the line-up became four-stroke based for model year 2005. The RX-1, released in 2003, was the first performance-oriented four-stroke snowmobile on the market. It was not, however, the first modern four-stroke snowmobile produced. That honor belongs to Arctic Cat for their Yellowstone Special, released in 2000, which was designed as a rental sled that could meet Yellowstone National Park's stringent emission requirement. However, Yamaha received much criticism for its weight disadvantage when compared to similar two-strokes, despite its fuel economy and low-range torque. Yamaha is now on the cutting edge of four-stroke technology with the introducing of their 80FI engine, which is equipped on the Phazer and Venture Lite models. This engine has one of the highest specific output of any four-stroke in production, with 160 HP/L, Yamaha achieves this even without the use of a forced induction system. Yamaha is also a key player in the "four-stroke wars", which are a series of advertisements from opponent Ski-Doo, who claim their E-tec and power-tec equipped two-strokes are still cleaner and more efficient than four-strokes, while Yamaha still claims the four-strokes are cleaner. Yamaha also broke a multi-year absence from sno-cross in the winter of 2006/2007 with their introduction of a factory race team headed by former Arctic Cat racer Robbie Malinoski.

Yamaha was the first brand to win with a 4-stroke in a professional snowcross race. This happened in 2006 at the WPSA snow cross Championship.

Current line-up

• Apex
• Nytro
• FX Nytro
• Phazer (4th Generation)
• RS Vector
• RS Venture
• VK Professional
• YBR
• YBR Custom

All-terrain vehicles (ATV) vehicles

• BW80/200/350
• YFZ450
• Raptor 80/250/350/660/700R
• Badger 80
• Blaster 200
• Timberwolf 250
• Banshee 350
• Warrior 350
• Bruin 350
• Kodiak 400/450
• Grizzly 80/125/350/400/450/550/600/660/700
• Big Bear 350/400
• Wolverine 350/450
• Tri-Zinger 60
• Tri-Moto 125/175/200/225
• Yamahauler 200
• Tri-Z 250

See also

• List of Yamaha Scooters
• Yamaha WaveRunner

External links

• Yamaha Motor Co. global site
• Yamaha Motorcycles at the Open Directory Project