‘A WHITE SEAT WAS SEEN IN THE LATE ’90S, BUT YAMAHA SAYS IT DOESN’T HAVE A GL750’
One of the remaining two GL750S was shown at the 1972 Paris Motor Show, after Sonauto Yamaha director JC Oliver insisted on displaying the bike in France, but they soon disappeared, never to be seen again – until a white seat was noticed by a European visitor to Japan in the late ’90s. The distinctive machine was one of hundreds of dusty design concepts, plus many important title-winning race bikes with flat tyres, stored in a large warehouse near Yamaha’s Iwata race department.
Yamaha restored many of these bikes before opening its Communications Plaza museum, yet the company recently said it doesn’t have a GL750.
The real reason the GL750 never reached production was fear of the California-led Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Swamped by traffic even in 1966, California had introduced car emission standards, but it was the Clean Air Act promoted by US Senator Edmund Muskie in 1970 that sent strong messages that tight standards, including the introduction of catalytic converters, would need to be met by 1975. While the GL750’S massive four-into-two exhausts intentionally reduced the sound, they couldn’t fit a bulky converter to reduce its hydrocarbons.
Yamaha wasn’t just concerned that its GL750 would be impossible to bring under Muskie’s limit, but also about the negative emissions impact the GL750 would have had during delicate Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) negotiations with the EPA – and public perceptions of high (and very visible) emissions from a large displacement two-stroke entering service at that time.
Yamaha’s Sasaki-san recently confirmed: “Once emissions control received more attention in the US around 1972, a large-displacement two-stroke motorcycle was in a tough situation. So we stopped development.” The firm instead took the decision to strengthen its four-stroke efforts, resulting in the innovative, but unsuccessful TX750.
If Yamaha had gone into production with the GL, it’s likely that many examples would have sold worldwide before the four-stroke XS750 (1976) and XS1100 (1978) arrived. Ultimately, the EPA emissions wrangle rumbled on for years during which time the GL750 could have become an excellent flagship with a flexible powerplant that would have suited touring as much as sports riding, let alone production racing. Imagine what later and more powerful GL750 models would have evolved into?