| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| 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) |
| Website | Yamaha Motor Global |
Yamaha Motor Company Limited (ヤマハ発動機株式会社 Yamaha Hatsudōki KK, IPA: [jamaha][1]) (TYO: 7272), 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".
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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.[4] 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.[5] In 1979, the XT500 won the first Paris-Dakar Rally.[6]
In 1994, 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.
Yamaha has a long racing heritage where it has had its machines and team win many different competitions in many different areas, particularly in motorcycle racing. Yamaha has had great success with riders such as Giacomo Agostini, Bob Hannah, Heikki Mikkola, Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Jeremy McGrath, Stefan Merriman, Phil Read, Chad Reed, Valentino Rossi, James Stewart and currently Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies. They won the supercross championship two years in a row (2008 and 2009) with the YZ 450F (One with Chad Reed, and the other with James Stewart). Yamaha has won a total of 36 World Championships, including 3 in MotoGP and 9 in the preceding 500 cc two-stroke class, and 1 in World Superbike.
Yamaha created the innovations which lead to the modern motocross bike, as they were 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 produced production road racing grand prix motorcycles that any licensed road racer could purchase. In 1970, non-factory "privateer" teams dominated the 250cc 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 good success in cross country with their YFZ450, being 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.
The company also produced Formula One engines from 1989 to 1997, initially for the Zakspeed team and later 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.
Yamaha has built engines for other manufacturers' vehicles beginning with the development and production of the Toyota 2000GT (1967) with the Toyota Motor Corporation. 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.[7][8] 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. The Volvo XC90 uses a larger version of the same engine. Yamaha also built Formula One racing engines from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, with little on-track success. In 1991, Yamaha developed its F1 engined supercar called the OX99-11 where two drivers sit in tandem in front of the engine, but the project was cancelled due to the world recession and lack of interest.
Yamaha also tunes engines for other manufacturers, Toyota being one of them. Yamaha logos are, for instance, found on the Toyota S engines.[9] as well as the 2ZZ-GE used by Toyota, Pontiac, and Lotus.
Yamaha developed a prototype for a two-seater sports car with help of Albrecht Goertz. While the Yamaha/Nissan partnership never progressed beyond the prototype stage, Toyota took up the design and released the Toyota 2000GT.
Yamaha has a a 100% four-stroke snowmobile line-up,[10] the only snowmobile manufacturer to do so. 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 to ever hit 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
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