Yamaha stole the thunder from four-wheeled vehicle makers at the Tokyo Motor Show with its Sports Ride concept car.
Yamaha scored one of the surprise hits of this year’s Tokyo Motor Show – and not with a new two-wheeler but a sports car concept designed to provide the “involved and active feeling” of a motorcycle.
The Sports Ride Concept is about the size of a Lotus Elise, about 500 pounds lighter than the latest Mazda Miata, and has the edgy looks of an Alfa-Romeo 4C. But whether it will actually make it into production is far from certain.
Yamaha officials didn’t want to discuss the Sports Ride in detail, and they repeatedly emphasized the fact that the tw0-seater is a “concept.” That said, the prototype sat on its display stand with a mock-up of the carbon fiber monocoque that would be used in its construction. And the display noted the 1,650-pound sports car would be built using the iStream production process.
That’s a potentially revolutionary manufacturing system developed by one-time McLaren Formula One designer Gordon Murray. It supposedly could be used to produce exotic vehicles inexpensively. It’s the same process that would be used for the electric city car concept dubbed the MOTIV.e that Yamaha unveiled at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show.
Yamaha officials didn’t want to discuss the Sports Ride in detail, and they repeatedly emphasized the fact that the tw0-seater is a “concept.”
In fact, the MOTIV.e, set to go into production in 2019 using Murray’s i-Stream process, which is meant to simplify automotive manufacturing and reduce its environmental impact. Among other things, it would allow the cost-effective shift away from conventional steel to the use of lightweight carbon fiber – a material that BMW is beginning to make more widespread use of with its battery-based i3 and i8 models.
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“Would I do a sports car based on i-Stream? Absolutely. I would love to do one, if it’s the last thing I do,” Murray told the Irish Times newspaper several years ago.
“This design concept mode takes a uniquely Yamaha approach by putting the involved and active feeling of riding a motorcycle, or ‘Live and Ride,’ into a vehicle with quintessential sports car proportions that adults can enjoy in daily use,” Yamaha explained in a terse news release.
Yamaha is not saying much about how it would produce the Sports Ride, but Toyota is a likely partner for the car.
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If Yamaha really is serious about getting into the car side of the business, that opens up a number of questions, notably where and how it would produce such a vehicle. One possibility, several sources are suggesting, would be to work with Toyota with whom it has partnered on other projects. But Toyota has its own small sports car coming, the S-FR model it also unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. That model is planned as an anchor to what will become a three sports car strategy for Toyota.
If Yamaha is thinking of dipping its toes into automotive manufacturing, it wouldn’t be the first time it has tried. Back in the late 1980s, it developed the high-performance V-6 used in the original Ford Taurus SHO, and later came out with a V-8 for Volvo. It even sold a quirky tandem two-seat supercar called the OX99-11 two decades ago, which also was designed by Murray.
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Getting into the car business wouldn’t be without precedent for a motorcycle manufacturer. Honda Motor Co. started out that way. Its original S500 model even used a motorcycle-style chain drive system. But where Honda initially focused on mainstream automobiles, Yamaha seems more interested in creating a four-wheeled equivalent of one of its crotch rocket sports bikes.