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/128133
Yamaha TOM900 Yamaha's TDM900 is a true go. anywhere motorcycle· but unfortunately we won't see it in the States. conjunction with a sympathetic restyle, with the TDM850's best two sales years coming in 1999 and 2000, in each of which 10,000 bikes found homes in Europe and Australasia. So now Yamaha has decided to give the still-unique concept a 10thbirthday makeover, with the advent of the TDM900 now entering production and on sale in dealerships around the world from January onward. Well, except in the good old USA - so you gotta feel sorry for the American biker not to be offered the chance to buy one of the world's most practical and unique motorcycle models, which like no other bike yet built for sale gives two-wheeled meaning to the word versatility. TECHNICALLY DYNO·MITE To reinvent the TDM, Yamaha has retained the same liquid-cooled 10valve parallel-twin dry-sump engine, with cylinders inclined forward by 45 degrees and chain-driven DOHC, which began life back in the 19805 as a 360-degree 750, before being bored out to 848cc a decade ago for the This Yamaha parallel-twin goes iust about anywhere - except to the USA. By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS By GOLD & GOOSE r ou had to give them credit for trying - but still, it was impossible not to smile. At this year's Milan Show in September, Ducati attempted to underline the growing diversity of its desmo V-twin range by displaying chief designer Pierre Terblanche's Multistrada "polivalente" prototype due to enter production in 2003 - a bike that (and I quote from the official Ducati press release accompanying the event) "introduces ... a new concept in motorcycling. The Multistrada combines sportbike perfonmance and design, with all-round abilities." You have to wonder if whomever it was in Bologna who wrote this really believed it - but if he or she did, then give them a D-minus grade in motorcycle studies. For just one week later, at the Paris Show, there was a reminder that the Italian company indeed did not invent go-anywhere sportbiking, when Yamaha unveiled its latest take on the versatile everyday motorcycle which the Japanese 8 DECEMBER 5, 2001 • cue company debuted 10 years ago (and whose biggest markets have always been France and, er - Italy!), in the shape of the new TDM900 paralleltwin. Originally launched back in 1991 as a multi-purpose all-a rounder derived from the firm's Dakar-winning XTZ750, more than 64,000 examples of the TDM850 have been built in the decade since then, establishing a unique new market sector in its own right, in much the same way that Ducati's own M900 Monster did in a quite different niche around the same time. As with the Monster, the TDM has proved equally impervious to imitation by Yamaha's competitors - most recently with the plethora of dirt-derived tarmac trailbikes now on the market, which still don't hit the same multi-purpose spot in the way the TDM has always done. In recognition of this, sales have continued to be bullish of the world's only true "moto totale," especially after the 1996 revamp which saw its TRX850 sporting sister's unique 270degree crankshaft throw adopted in n e _ s ... The TDM has good street characteristics and allows quite high comer speeds and lean angles for the genre.