2021 YAMAHA TENERE 700
R I D E R E V I E W
P68
fender for maneuvering the bike around.
Fuel capacity is healthy at 4.2 gallons.
Yamaha claims 215 miles between fill-ups.
Seat height is an approachable 34.4 inches.
The Yamaha Tenere 700 is powered by the
finely capable CP2 engine made famous by
the MT-07 street bike. The parallel twin isn't
overly sophisticated; you won't find a suite of
electronic rider aids on this bike (just ABS).
Yamaha figures many of you prefer that.
The Tenere's CP2 comes tuned specifically
to flatten the already broad torque curve of
the cross-plane-firing unit. This firing ar-
rangement has been proven in past Yamaha
Dakar bikes, sport bikes and naked street
machines, providing great traction feeling,
clean torque and a super cool sound. The
engine also features Tenere-specific tuning
to encourage peak power to hold on longer
through the RPM range. Yamaha's policy in
the U.S. is to keep horsepower and torque
figures under wraps, but we do know that the
We found the
Tenere 700 to be
un-intimidating yet
very capable.
Euro-spec Tenere's are claimed to generate
approximately 72 horsepower at 9000 rpm
and 50 ft-lb of torque at 6500 rpm.
While it might've been a bummer to wait so
long, the delay in delivery of the Tenere 700
to the United States comes with a few benefits
because our bikes actually got some updates,
most of those addressing some of our com-
plaints we had in Spain.
However, our list of complaints on the
Yamaha Tenere 700 was short. First and
foremost was throttle response/smoothness.
Our European test bike felt abrupt at small
throttle openings, like the fueling map was
not optimized for low-throttle openings, and
the end result was a hesitation and snap or
surge of power that would slap the chain and
put a shock into the rear sprocket. This surge
