Why Choose Yamaha?

[jackcorbett]

You will find that throughout my posts I've been pretty consistent with my advice to those wanting to know which motorbike to choose when I recommend either the top of the line Yamaha automatic (the Yamaha Nouvo Elegance) or the Honda 125 Pxi if one's driving is primarily in the city. That of course leaves out the smaller bikes such as the Yamaha Mio, Fino or Honda Click. Just to show that I'm not prejudiced here's a picture of a bright red Yamaha Fino I bought a now ex girlfriend (who I've cut out of this picture) several years ago. I will admit that I enjoyed driving this Fino very much.

I viewed it at the time as just about the prettiest thing on wheels and when this girlfriend and I drove it to a bar that's about 1 mile from my condo I'd often sit there drinking my beer studying this Fino parked across the street and thinking what a stroke of genius it was for Yamaha to have designed the Fino in the first place. Basically it's a very finely executed replica of an Italian Vespa with Japanese reliability and a very low price tag. Its sculptured lines are just magnificent.

But for an all around machine that will do it all in a city environment such as Pattaya, such as occasionally having three people on board and meaningful under the seat storage and greater stability at higher speeds one really needs something like a Yamaha Nouvo or Honda Air Blade. Now here's why I think Yamaha is the top choice.

Back in the U.S. I have owned two Honda cars and four Honda motorcycles do don't think that I'm prejudiced against Honda. But....at least here in Thailand both Honda and Suzuki are playing catchup when it comes to automatic motorcyles. People have asked about the Suzuki Hayate. Well, a fellow condo owner bought one and when I took his new bike for a test spin all I could think of was that it was a cheap copy of the Yamaha Nouvo 115 c.c. MX I owned then. Sure it had 125 c.c's but I really couldn't tell any power difference whatsoever. The tire configuration of the two bikes was exactly the same. The style was the exact same. In fact, Suzuki had the same two little compartments large enough to hold a pair of sunglasses or gloves inside the front cowling of the bike that my Nouvo had. The under the seat storage seemed identical both in size and shape. I'm not saying the Hayake is a bad machine. However the word COPY CAT kept screaming at me from inside my head.

How long did it take Honda to wake up and realize that Yamaha's automatics were were doing quite well in Thailand which prompted Honda to then start marketing here the Air Blade and the Click? Two years? And there is no question that Yamaha's been quite successful with its Italian retro Fino's and that once again Honda woke up after a two year slumber and introduced its Scoopy. However......people's tastes will differ on style just as they will when it comes to music, literature and a whole lot of things. For me, the Fino's got it. It's got the sensational sexy Italian lines that make it a thing of beauty. The Scoopy at least for me, just doesn't cut muster.

For some reason here in Thailand Yamaha has so far ignored that segment of the market that is already being filled by such machines as Honda's 150 CBR, Kawasaki's Ninja 250 R, and the Kawasaki 650 ERn. Honda is now rumored to soon introduce a new 250 c.c. V twin, a machine that has already been selling well in Japan for a few years already. It looks to be a terrific machine for what it is. My point is once again Honda's been caught napping. Kawasaki will have had the little Ninja out for a couple of years by the time Honda comes out with anything competitive. The little Ninja's basically a 140,000 baht machine versus the much larger Ern at around 240,000 baht.

So when it comes to the automatics I'd have to go with Yamaha for being by far the most innovative company in this market segment. If I lived out in the boonies where I'd have a lot of two lane highways to drive on and much less city driving I'd have to go with one of the two Kawasaki machines provided that I did not have to go too far for good service. But as fine a company as Honda is, I dont like complacent fat cat companies that sit on their butts while relying upon their past reputations.

Edited December 21, 2009 by jackcorbett

[bazmlb]

I am ready to set fire to my Nuovo, its been nothing but trouble. probably wouldnt even burn if tipped 10 liters of gasoline over it.

Finos are so expensive for all the fancy plastic too, friend had a small drop and cost them 23,000 baht for the replacement bits.

[LivinLOS]

Fino and mio almost same bike with different plastics.. Piston / bore / stroke etc all same..

Personally I would rather have a vasectomy than be seen riding a fino.. but thats just me.

[Travelmate]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

[BigBikeBKK]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

They make pretty nice guitars too

[neverdie]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

Having owned quite a few Yamaha's I am wondering what you have against them, perhaps you can't handle the hp?

[Travelmate]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

Having owned quite a few Yamaha's I am wondering what you have against them, perhaps you can't handle the hp?

Look under the skin. The design & engineering is awful.

Yamaha is good at covering up with pretty clothes, like Fino & R1.

Who would design a coolant hose to pass right thru the sump of a hot engine!

[neverdie]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

Having owned quite a few Yamaha's I am wondering what you have against them, perhaps you can't handle the hp?

Look under the skin. The design & engineering is awful.

Yamaha is good at covering up with pretty clothes, like Fino & R1.

Who would design a coolant hose to pass right thru the sump of a hot engine!

It doesnt seem right to mention those two words together....fino & R1. Having said that, although the models are escaping me at the moment I have seen a few other breed of bikes over the years with strange plumbing work. You can't deny Yamaha credit fow where it deserves, it has certainly led various areas of the motorcycleing market at times with cutting edge technology and performance, the R1 of 98/99 was a perfect example of that.

Take off your rose coloured glasses, just for a moment & recognise that there are achievements over the road. I use to be fairly opinionated about Triumph, however Im not too blind to see that they are onto something good now.

[jackcorbett]

Fire away boys, pro or con. As for Yamaha having faulty design, you know how Honda has that motor shut off setup on their Clicks and Air Blades so if you have the kickstand down the motor automatically shuts down. Well, you should have seen this Click a pal of mine was renting. He limped into our condo building parking lot on the Click aided by a couple of his buddies. They looked after him while I looked after the bike and it took over ten minutes for me to shut the machine down. The area underneath the instrument panel had been pushed in during the accident and kept wrestling around down there to get a grip on the key. The kickstand shut off failed completely. I knew if I put the kickstand down the engine would shut off. I mean you can go to a 7-11 and want the engine to run for just one minute while you use your card to get money but the Honda shut off will work every time you put the kick stand down. But not after this accident. Well, I worked pretty hard getting that Honda Click engine to shut off.

[katabeachbum]

The only time I will ever buy Yamaha. Is if I feel the need for a piano. Which is very unlikely.

Having owned quite a few Yamaha's I am wondering what you have against them, perhaps you can't handle the hp?

Look under the skin. The design & engineering is awful.

Yamaha is good at covering up with pretty clothes, like Fino & R1.

Who would design a coolant hose to pass right thru the sump of a hot engine!

A Piano maker

[Surfing Spleen]

I owned a Ducati Monster and disconnecting the kickstand auto engine shutoff was my very first mod and I couldn't get it done fast enough. I like my Nouvo but screws keep falling off it, don't they use Loctite here? It also tends to run rough for about a half kilometer if it hasn't been ridden in a few days. Minor complaints, overall it's a great little putt.

[BigBikeBKK]

I owned a Ducati Monster and disconnecting the kickstand auto engine shutoff was my very first mod and I couldn't get it done fast enough. I like my Nouvo but screws keep falling off it, don't they use Loctite here? It also tends to run rough for about a half kilometer if it hasn't been ridden in a few days. Minor complaints, overall it's a great little putt.

Heh, heh... I have a friend who owns a stunning BMW 1200GS and he thought he was clever and disconnected the kill switch on his kickstand.

Hanging out at a gas station with a bunch of friends and we're getting ready to go- he reaches over and hits the started button. Can anyone guess what happened next?

[basjke]

Whats wrong with the design of Yamaha?

And who said they don't have power?

[nikster]

The one thing that puts me off of the Yamahas is the lack of fuel injection. Wake up Yamaha, this is 2009?! I guess they'll have to add it soon, as mentioned somewhere in this forum, and that will make the Fino better.

Regarding the Fino - I also think it was a stroke of genius to put out, and I've always thought it was far and away the best looking scooter. Rented them many times and like the feel too, I prefer it to other autos I have tried.

But just like Honda is sitting on their butts for long periods of time, so is Yamaha. Last year's Fino colors were downright awful - how can you mess up such a nice design like this? It's like they were just waiting for the Scoopy to kill them. Scoopy isn't as nicely designed though - there is something about the Fino that's hard to describe - it's just a really perfect design. If Yamaha was smart, they'd offer more colors and styles, and get into the aftermarket mod scene big time. I feel like they owned this market for years and years, and did nothing with it.

[jackcorbett]

The one thing that puts me off of the Yamahas is the lack of fuel injection. Wake up Yamaha, this is 2009?! I guess they'll have to add it soon, as mentioned somewhere in this forum, and that will make the Fino better.

Regarding the Fino - I also think it was a stroke of genius to put out, and I've always thought it was far and away the best looking scooter. Rented them many times and like the feel too, I prefer it to other autos I have tried.

But just like Honda is sitting on their butts for long periods of time, so is Yamaha. Last year's Fino colors were downright awful - how can you mess up such a nice design like this? It's like they were just waiting for the Scoopy to kill them. Scoopy isn't as nicely designed though - there is something about the Fino that's hard to describe - it's just a really perfect design. If Yamaha was smart, they'd offer more colors and styles, and get into the aftermarket mod scene big time. I feel like they owned this market for years and years, and did nothing with it.

I think all of these Japanese motorcycle companies have their heads up their as**es, (But I still love my Yamaha Nouvo Elegance). Here's my theory. It is a fundamental marketing assumption to find out what prospective customers really want and to deliver that. I really believe most potential motorcycle customers looking for something bigger and more capable on the highway than a scooter really want a middleweight that offers a good comfortable upright riding position, good handling and good power for the task at hand at a modest price. Back in 1973 my Honda 350 CB offered all of this in spades. And today on Thailand's roads I is still going to run rings around any "reasonably priced mounts". Example in point--a CBR 150 at 60,000 baht, a Honda Phantom at around 80,000 baht or even a Ninja 250 R at around 140,000 baht. The 350 had 36 horsepower. The Ninja 250 delivers around 33 but it takes very high rpms to do it. And the seating position of the Honda 350 CB was better. The 450 Honda when it came out would roughly match the British 650's for higher speed driving, say on interstates and it wasn't that much more expensive than the 350 but it was not quite as agile. Meanwhile Yamaha had its 350 RD which had about 39 horsepower and that thing would run away from both a Ninja 250 or a Honda 350 CB. But it was very comfortable. Its drawback is it was a 2 stroke. Back then the Honda 350 cost around $1000 with the Yamaha being sold at about the same price.

But I think companies such as Honda and Yamaha decided that although such bikes were what their customers really needed and wanted they couldn't make a lot of money selling them due to modest profit margins on such relatively inexpensive machinery. So they sought out to artificially create demand for much higher profit margin motorcycles. And they apparently have so far been pretty successful at selling the idea that you really need 4 cylinders with at least 1000 cc's or that anything that doesn't look like a crotch rocket is not a good performer, that anything less than a Honda Goldwing won't stand up to across country cruising day in and day out or that Harley's and V twin Harley look a likes spelled real power and that real men rode that kind of bike.

As far as Yamaha missing the boat on its coloring schemes, I think both Honda and Yamaha have been pretty inept here. Example in point, when Honda came out with its Airblade and Honda Click the colors initially offered certainly were not inspirational. It took Honda nearly a year to come out with an Air Blade in that Phoenix red for example. And as for Yamaha although it was offering some decent colors in its 115 c.c. MX Nouvo's when it first came out with its Nouvo Elegance every color scheme offered was God Awful. Red rear shock springs on a bike that was essentially black? Ouch! And this first series of Elegances had all that large hideous lettering across the sides. But Yamaha just as Honda had with its Clicks and Air Blades finally wised up. I think the new color schemes for the Elegance are as different from the old ones as night and day.

As for the Fino, I'm seeing them all over the place. Without question Yamaha came out with a huge hit here. But most of the color schemes now offered are not very attractive in my opinion. My ex girlfriend's bright red Fino, now that was something. So Yamaha has taken a good thing here and made it less than what it once was. On the other hand, when I go into my condo parking lot and look at all the motor bikes there very few of them have tasteful coloring. Most are atrocious regardless of what company manufactured them.

As for the lack of fuel injection on the present Nouvo Elegance, it does offer fuel injection on its manual transmission 135 c.c. Sparks and in fact after Honda brought out water cooling in its Air Blade and Click Yamaha came out with water cooling and 135 c.c. engine in its Spark long before it brought both out in its Nouvo Elegance. And someone brought up here that Yamaha will soon bring out a fuel injected 125 c.c. bike (is it called the XMax?) to directly compete against Honda's new 125 c.c. Pxi. Well I looked up the X max and I found a whole lot of listings for it. It has about 13.9 horsepower to the Nouvo Elegance's 11.2 even though it has 10 fewer c'c's. It has a much larger fuel tank as well----holding more than 3 gallons making it more capable of longer rides in areas where gas stations are not so plentiful. Apparently it's been offering this bike for a couple of years. Yamaha X Max and More on the X Max It's just not been offering it in Thailand.

Meanwhile in other parts of the world Honda has been offering what seems to be a terrific 300 c.c. scooter style motorbike. And lately it has been gouging U.S. customers with a $4500 price tag for its 150 SHi scooter. Like the 300 SH i it's being made in Italy where I suspect the labor is much higher than it is in such countries as Thailand.

As of now, the Yamaha Nouvo Elegance offers TBS, something called Throttle Body Sensor in the carburetor. The Yamaha air cooled MX did not. This is supposed to offer more efficient fuel delivery. I'm wondering why Yamaha offers it in the Elegance, how much of an improvement it makes, etc. But one thing you can be sure of---I paid 53,000 baht for the Yamaha Nouvo MX three years before I bought my Yamaha Nouvo Elegance for 52,000 baht---1000 baht less and believe me, the new 135 c.c. Nouvo Elegance is one helluva lot more machine than its predecessor in nearly every meaningful aspect. So it could be this new carburetion sensing system offers many benefits fuel injection offers at a huge cost savings. But be sure, both Yamaha and Honda now have the technology to deliver to everyone of us some terrific automatic step throughs that will do just about anything we can ask of them.

Now, in larger bikes more capable of cruising the highways, particularly in countries such as the U.S. why can't both Honda and Yamaha offer something as capable as the Honda CB 350, CB 450 or Yamaha 350 RD did nearly forty years ago at reasonable prices? The fact that they haven't been willing to do so and it takes a smaller company that enjoys far inferior worldwide sales as kawasaki has done with its 650 ERn to show them how it's done speaks volumes.

[ricklev]

My first bike at 16 was a Honda CB 350. I loved it!

[jackcorbett]

My first bike at 16 was a Honda CB 350. I loved it!

So let's see, what can you get in the U.S. that is even remotely comparable to the Honda CB 350---a 250 Rebel twin with its 17 horsepower and less than 75 miles an hour top speed? Honda used to be progressive. That's why we loved bikes such as the CB 350. Only thing that put me off from buying the Yamaha 350 RD was it was a two stroke that would only get 30 to 35 miles per gallon. But the bike drove like a roller skate. In fact it drove so good I can still feel what it was like accelerating away on one forty years later. The CB 350 turned out to be a terrific choice however.

Edited December 22, 2009 by jackcorbett

[BSJ]

When it comes down to it I don't really give a toss. As long as it starts when I turn the key I am happy! My bugger is to heavy to push far....except down hill!

[ttakata]

Perhaps Honda is slacking off in their bike department to concentrate on their other divisions?

I mean they do make jets, robots (that will kill us all soon), outboards, lawnmowers, generators, and of course cars.

That's a lot of different competition to consider.

I'm no expert in jets, but I know a Gulfstream G650 costs around 60 million USD and the Hondajet is supposed to be around 4 million.

When you consider this level or competition and future market opportunity, I'd care less about bikes too.

Now Yamaha has no excuse to slack off.

You can't swap many resources between their motor divisions and their music/electronics divisions.

I'd love to see Yamaha own the market since competition benefits the consumer.

Maybe they're in financial trouble or just playing it safe.

I can't blame any company for slowing down and cutting costs to ensure their survival.

If a company gets too big it can implode like GM and Ford.

Personally I would have loved to see these bikes sold here:

Honda FTR http://www.honda.co.jp/FTR/

Yamaha TW225 http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/news/.../24/tms-04.html

Are all the Japanese bikes sold in Thailand made here as well?

When I look at the ridiculous prices of imported cars, would imported bikes suffer the same price inflation?

Maybe this is why we have such limited offerings, they would have to be imported and taxed 200-300%.

[visions]

Make no mistake....Honda are still leading the motorbike world in development of new models.

Their new 2010 V series of VFR bikes are streets ahead of anything the other manufacturers currently have.

Currently they put out a V5 and V4......Im waiting for a V3 (400 - 500cc?) or V2 (250 - 350cc)

Features include frameless chassis.....everything is hung off the motor. Electronic gearshift....button on the grip many more revolutionary features.....

Sadly, I think never available in Thailand.

[neverdie]

^Yes that VFR is certainly sounding nice. I read that you have to either select the auto model with padleshift gears or the manual, theres certainly no paddle shift option for the manual, but I guess that makes sense, no different to cars.

The end result of what they released looks a little bit different to that picture you posted.

[jackcorbett]

Make no mistake....Honda are still leading the motorbike world in development of new models.

Their new 2010 V series of VFR bikes are streets ahead of anything the other manufacturers currently have.

Currently they put out a V5 and V4......Im waiting for a V3 (400 - 500cc?) or V2 (250 - 350cc)

Features include frameless chassis.....everything is hung off the motor. Electronic gearshift....button on the grip many more revolutionary features.....

Sadly, I think never available in Thailand.

No doubt it's one helluva bike. Here's a link to one of them in the Honda web site. VFR Sport at $15999

So what else can I buy for the same money? How about a 2007 Miata sportscar for $15988 with only 22,000 miles on it. I've had two Mazda Miata sportscars and have found that if you don't put Superchargers on them they will run forever. These things now put out 170 horsepower stock and run zero to sixty in about 7 seconds. I've personally put 1000 miles a day on them in total comfort and the only thing that will handle with them is a Porsche. Besides even if they were offered in Thailand at considerably more than $16,000 due to the taxes I'll bet my Nouvo will run rings around it in heavy city traffic.

Edited December 23, 2009 by jackcorbett

[MaiChai]

The Japanese manufacturers are only interested in making money, and the Thais will buy whatever they are sold. You have to look at the Thai logic at buying something. They won't evaluate it in terms of technology since most Thais have a poor understanding of science or anything technical. They will buy it in terms of what they think its fashionable and cool, and this is a herd mentality thing. I mean you need someone to start off a fashion, and this is partly driven by marketing by the manufacturers. The Thais do know that by buying Japanese you will get something that is good, reliable and will last. This is something the manufacturers don't need to prove. From the manufacturers point of view they will try and maximise profits buy selling at a price most Thais can afford, while still making a good profit margin. This means cheap small bikes and selling lots of them. I think this is what the market is in Thailand. Catering to foreigners and lovers of big bikes is not going to make them lots of money, as the volumes are low.

Regarding technology and bikes, not really anything revolutionary invented in the last 15 years or so. Only improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions, plus manufacturing improvements (finer tolerances, QA, etc).