Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127758
RIDING'l'MPRESStON' European Yamaha TRX850 , , By Alan Cathcart / Photos by Patrick Gosling T ~ 0\ ~ -.D l-o C1l ,.£le C1l u C1l a 6 hings aren't always the way they seem. Exactly 25 years ago, In the days when British parallel-twins like Norton and Triumph ruled the sportbike world, a trio of manufacturers launched their own debut twin-cylinder four-stroke designs, aimed at cutting themselves a slice of what was eventually known as the cafe racer market: Ducati and Moto Guzzi their 750cc 90-degree V-twins, and Yamaha its 650cc parallel"twin XS-l, Norton of course is no longer with us for the time being, Triumph in bornagain mode under John Bloor hasn't yet made anything with fewer than three cylinders - and Ducati and Guzzi have never since built anything other than twins. But Yamaha has also regaled us for the past quarter-century with an array of models that have aroused the interest of twin-cylinder enthusiasts around the world - bikes like the XS650 that was what a British twin should have become but never did, the XV920/TR-l range of un-Hali'an Vmotors, and most recently the Super Tenere and TDM8S0 slant-block, 10valve parallel-twins. Yamaha is the Japanese company that, for all its twostroke RD350LC heritage, has been most clqsely wedded to the twin-cylinder four-stroke theme - a policy whose latest manifestation is the TRX850 sports twin launched earlier this year in the Japanese home market. So now Trixie Yamaha has followed her ringding sister Elsie onto the two-wheeled design catwalk: Trixie, This Is Your Life. Considering therefore that Yamaha helped create the modern Twin Supersports motorcycle, it seems a little churlish to accuse them now, as many have done, of jumping on a bandwagon supposedly the exclusive preserve of smallvolume European manufacturers. It's equally unjust to infer that, in order to do so, Yamaha simply concocted a Japanese Ducati, by building a slavish copy of a Bologna-made tubular-steel space-frame chassis to house their trademark slant-block motor. Unfair, even if they re-engineered the engine internally to mimic a Ducati's torquey personality by rephasing the crank throw from the two-up, 360-degree, Britbike format of the TDM which the Trixie engine is derived from, to an offbeat 270-degree guise which, anyway you look at it, has the same engine characteristics as a 90degree V-twin. But this was all done for a purpose, as Stephane Peterhansel's string of African rally victories on his 270-degree works Yamaha twin have proven: The format enabled him to enjoy the same off-road traction on loose surfaces offered by the tuned Ducati 900 engine fitted to the rival Cagiva Elefant, in turn delivering rally-winning Big Bang ridability, now translated to the street. Unfair? Churlish? Don't believe me? Well, how about listening to Massimo Tamburini, chief design guru of the Cagiva Group and the man responsible for the 90055 Ducati that has allegedly been so plagiarized by the Yamaha TXR850. "People seem to think that the tubular spaceframe is a Ducati trademark," he says, "whereas in fact it was invented by the British on the John Player Norton, and there have been many specialist chassis constructors since then who have used it on every kind of bike not least Bimota. I do agree it's a European design concept - but you can't The TRX850 makes Its Continental debut sans the ltallanesque red and white paint scheme used In Japan. Instead, blue and sliver or all black will be offered. accuse Yamaha of being any more derivative for using it on the TRX than we were for employing a Deltabox chassis on the 500 Cagiva GP bike! Anyway, the TRX frame doesn't even resemble the Ducati 90055, so much as one of Segale's designs - and in fact, I have followed the same composite path with the Cagiva F4 Superbike chassis I just completed, which like the Yamaha uses an upper space-frame combined with a lower aluminum engine mount and swingarm pivot, whereas the Ducati/s is in steel!" So there: Perhaps if Yamaha hadn't curiously decided to duplicate the Ducati's red and white color scheme on the Jmarket Trixie, none of the copycat accusations would ever have been leveled. There was,never really much doubt it would happen, but after a debut year in 1995 when it was sold exclusively in the Japanese home market for which the model was originally conceived, Yama-