Will We See A Yamaha Tenere 900 Soon?

[advrider]

Everybody is hyping it. Well, not everybody, but a lot of Euro mags are saying Yamaha will release a Tenere 900 in the very near future. For their part, the always-enthusiastic moto-press in India is promising the bike is all but a done deal, just around the corner… and everyone’s running computer-drawn renderings to prove it.

Picture a Tenere 700 with an extra cylinder stuff into the frame. The T9 would almost certainly have the same styling as the T7. However, rumor says the 900 would get a 19-17 wheelset, and be more street-oriented. Photo: Yamaha

So. Are we about to see a Yamaha Tenere 900 released? Errrr, maybe—that’s a bit of a trick question, and should be broken down three ways: Is Yamaha working on such a project, will it be released soon, and will it spread across global markets quickly?

First—it would be shocking if Yamaha wasn’t working on a project like this. There is still plenty of money to be made in the big-bike ADV market, and Yamaha’s Super Tenere won’t pass emissions testing forever. Yamaha has the hard part done—the three-cylinder MT-09 platform was developed years ago and has already probably paid off its R&D costs. This would be simple re-warming of leftover technology, and it’s simple business sense to at least explore the possibilities here.

Second—Is it a good time to release a new bike? While some markets are seeing sales return to normalcy from after 18 months of high numbers, the reality is that if there were exciting new bikes to sell, people would be lined up to buy them. It’s possible we would have seen the 900 already, if COVID hadn’t interfered—but COVID did interfere. Now all OEMs must be wondering whether it’s wise to introduce new models at this point, bringing more instability to the supply chain and potentially running afoul of rapidly-rising interest rates combined with runaway inflation. This is the biggest question to be answered, and only Yamaha’s in-house number-crunchers truly know the answer. However, it’s worth noting that the Euro manufacturers have been going flat-out since reopening after COVID, and this project seems to be driven by Yamaha Motor Europe, the company’s extremely-important subsidiary. And that raises another important question …

Third—Will we see the Yamaha Tenere 900 in North America soon? The answer is, most likely not. Remember how long it took the T7 to make it to the US and Canada? Years of teasing, followed by a further delay when Euro customers could get the bike, and North American’s couldn’t? Expect the same for a T9, as most likely production will once again start in Europe before the main Japanese factories spin up. That means French/Italians/Germans/Brits will be hooning about the continent on their new three-cylindered Yamaha ADVs long before we can, most likely.

Or maybe not. With Intermot and EICMA both scheduled to run as normal this year, we’ll see a Tenere 900 announcement if the rumors are true, and we’d expect a rough timeline announced at that point. Stay tuned.

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