YAMAHA Vmax
There simply ain’t nothing like a V-max: you’ve seen the original and seen the specials in this issue – but what are they like to buy?
It’s said, in certain circles, that Yamaha had the means, motive and opportunity to well and truly pull the rug out from under Honda circa 1984. This was the precise moment in time when the upstarts from Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, really were aiming to topple the acknowledged masters from Minato, Tokyo. Yamaha’s 1300cc, V four, Venture was easily as good as Honda’s Gold Wing and for many a better all-round machine. However, maverick Yamaha chose not to squander resources challenging a market-leading product and, as they have oh so many times, gone their own sweet way. And on this occasion it really paid off.
Good at fashioning new market segments (think XT500, TDR250, R1, etc.), someone in the R&D team had a light bulb moment. In a move akin to Charlie Corker’s final scene in The Italian Job, Michael Caine’s Japanese doppelganger looked at the Venture’s motor and said: “Hang on lads, I've got a great idea!”
Okay, so that’s a bit fanciful, but there’s more than a grain of truth there. American-based Yamaha product planner Ed Burke came up with the idea of a hot-rod motorcycle that exuded raw power, muscle and presence, yet would remain practical. With Japanese engineers Araki and Ashihara working out of California, draft designs were created to deliver a profile never before seen on two wheels and, crucially, borrowing the motive unit from the Venture. And to make sure the prototype was
‘on point’, Yamaha brought in an external design agency – GK Industrial Design Laboratory, led by Kenji Ekuan.
Given that the liquid-cooled V4 motor had originally been designed for touring, it was inevitable that it was going to lack top end. Even with serious reworking the motor still apparently lacked the poke the designers were after. Briefly considering then dropping the notion of a turbo, Ashihara and his team came up with the now legendary V-boost system. As simple in concept as it is genius, in actuality the set up launches two carburettors’ worth of fuel into a single cylinder via servo-controlled butterfly valves as the engine hits 6000 revs. These clever gizmos live, respectively, between the first and second and third and fourth cylinders and probably owe something in technology, if not design, to the firm’s YPVS Yamaha Power Valve System first seen on their GP strokers a few years earlier.
The new machine, named V-max, borrowed some of the Venture’s basic chassis but reverted to twin rear shocks for visual impact along with a super-wide rear tyre mounted on a 15-inch rim. Stepped seats, air intakes either side of the tank (later seen on the FZX750), an almost totally solid profile from radiator to rear wheel, mock tank (the real one is under the seat), and so much more made this bruiser of a cruiser like nothing else that had gone before.
Despite its mass that was over a quarter of tonne the 145bhp available made for a missile of a machine, and with almost 90 foot pounds of torque on offer the V-max pulled like the proverbial train. Within months of its general release in 1985 the bike became a cult machine with a reputation for being something of an animal with an antisocial edge to it. Quite possibly not the image Yamaha might have imagined, but just like Kawasaki’s berserk triples a decade or more before, the V-max attracted a disproportionate level of interest which had to be good for overall sales.
As you might expect Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki all came up with supposed market place equivalents. Honda stripped off and kicked back with their V65 Magna based on their V4 sports bikes, Suzuki rushed out the Madura V4 range which only lasted two years, and Kawasaki took the easy way out, restyling existing models and branding them as ‘Eliminators’. If proof were every needed that the V-max was spot-on out of the blocks know this – the bike remained on sale in its target American market from 1985 through to 2006 when it was supposedly eclipsed by the all-new Next-gen VMAX. With an engine almost half a litre larger, the new version may have been better in terms of tech, but has never enjoyed the same levels of success or popularity.
Part muscle-bike, part custom machine, part boulevard cruiser and part sprinter the Yamaha V-max remains one of a kind – a totally and utterly different motorcycle. And perhaps the greatest compliment ever paid to it was Harley-davidson’s liquid-cooled V4 designed in conjunction with Porsche. H-D’S V-rod was arguably the closest take on the V-max, but it wasn’t one.