Of the Yamaha Ténéré 700 Rally Edition you should already know almost everything thanks to video and technical details and set-up that we have already shown (together with the list price). Now let’s take a step, indeed a jump back of 37 years. And let’s talk about the race bike that inspired the Rally, the Yamaha XT 600 Ténéré which competed in 1983. She was the first to boast the name of the Saharan desert, but she had a good reason for it. Paris-Dakar in these years was a race for daredevils: riding motorcycles derived from the series, equipped with huge tanks and primordial navigation instruments. The risk of getting lost was very high and for this reason the water supplies mandatory for regulation touched the 6 liters. Days could pass before they found you. And it happened, and how it happened.
We come now to this strange comparison between means separated for almost 40 years. The first Ténéré 600 was a race bike, but on closer inspection it can also be done. It was in fact derived from the production motorbike, adapted for long sailed raids.
The Yamaha XT 600 Ténéré with its beautiful blue color made famous by the television reports of those years (with our Nico Cereghini. Oh yes, just him) was equipped with the single-cylinder engine as standard, 595 cc, with air cooling. It had 44 horses at 6,500 rpm, which pushed the bike to almost 160 km / h. The gearbox had 5 ratios and the suspension was long travel (about 250 mm in front and behind, with the fork derived from that of the YZ 490 for motocross). The saddle distanced the beauty of 91 cm from the ground and the dry weight was not shocking, equal to about 160.
To these were added all the liquids (engine oil, water and 43 liters of petrol!). It reaches well over 200 kg in running order. Not too far from today’s 700, which weighs 204 kg with all liquids. It’s true, the tank has 16 liters of capacity, but luckily the modern bike consumes almost half of its ancestor. There saddle is 89 cm from the ground and the standard suspensionsfully adjustable, they have 210 mm travel in front and 200 behind.
The power of the 689 cc liquid-cooled parallel twin engine leaps forward and passes from 44 horsepower to 75 to 9,000 rpm, while the gearbox is now 6-speed.
The maximum speed close to the actual 200 km / h (watch our test on the track). Numbers that make the Yamaha Ténéré 700 Rally Edition a maxi enduro also suitable for travel on asphalt. Much more than the 600 of the 80s was.
How about this comparison? Was it risky? We don’t think so and we tell you why. At Africa Eco Race, won twice in a row by the great Alessandro Botturi, there is category reserved for twin-cylinder motorcycles. Here is this Rally Edition we would see it well led by the Bottu in Africa.
Note: the images of this service, made by Yamaha, show a 1981 XT 500 and not the XT 600 Ténéré we are talking about above.
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