VOLUME ISSUE APRIL , P121
(Above) Exclusive,
expensive, and
designed purely to
win the WorldSBK
Championship (which
it didn't), the OW01
Yamaha is one of the
company's greatest
hits. (Right) Fully
adjustable forks,
dropped offset top
triple-clamps, and a
detachable subframe
were serious kit back
in 1989.
on an up-spec'd Marlboro Yamaha
FZ750R. The FZ would remain in pro-
duction until the end of 1991, replaced
by the YZF750 for 1993. However, for
'89, Yamaha released what is possibly
their most exotic machine ever, the
FZR750R, more commonly known by its
factory designation—the OW01.
The OW01 signaled a change in
company philosophy at Yamaha. The
age of superbikes was dawning and
to beat the Honda RC30 they needed
something special. The new GSX-R and
ZXR would help fill the grids, but these
bikes were considerably less—both in
price and specification—than the RC30.
Yamaha decided to meet Honda head-
on. Sporty road commuters like the
FZ750 could no longer be considered
real superbikes—if you wanted to win in
the arms race that was the new World
Superbike Championship, you needed
proper firepower.
What the RC30 proved was that there
was a market for seriously high-end
production bikes. Regardless of cost,
all that mattered was racetrack suc
-
cess. Yamaha had a bike in the portly
FZR1000 that cost much less and had a
bigger engine than the FZR750R OW01,
but it could never legally compete with
the RC30 on track. The FZR1000 went
on to spawn the ThunderAce and even
-
tually the YZF-R1, but that's a story for
another time.
Yamaha already had the basis for
the OW01 sitting in the factory in 1988.
That year, Kevin Magee and Wayne
Rainey had used a super-special, fac
-
tory Formula One-spec YZF750 Genesis
(at the time the YZF tag was reserved
for factory specials only like the Formu
-
la One bike and was not related to the
production road bike of the same tag,
which debuted in 1993) to clinch pole
position and the race win by one lap at
the Suzuka 8 Hour endurance race.
It would be Aussie Magee's second
straight 8 Hour victory, after taking the
win in 1987 with German 250cc rider
