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/1544037
T raversable wormholes, those mysterious pas- sageways that will allow time travel for humankind, may already be with us, and one of the top beneficiaries will be the motorcycling industry. Say what? Yep, the Doctor Whos of the two- wheeled industry are busy at work in a future world, and the proof is right there on your screen where a certain American motorcycle com - pany is showcasing a sport bike that, in the world of mass production, doesn't even really exist. These Time Lords are watching and waiting for our reactions, observations, com - pliments and criticisms. When they have the data they need, they will return to the present, when said motorcycle will either be green-lighted into produc - tion or dropped into the abyss to dwell with rotary-engined street bikes, four-cylinder two- strokes, motorcycles with two front wheels, and a few imagined cycles that went "bang" before they took their first "suck." Such soothsaying was not possible in the good old days (which are defined as any time before yesterday), when mo - torcycle manufacturers were foisting onto the public bikes that they thought we needed. Someone, somewhere in the building thought that there must be a market for a middleweight, liquid-cooled V-twin. Introducing the Yamaha XV 550 Vision. Cycle News road-tested the Yamaha Vision in the March 10, 1982, issue and waited just a few sentences before making it clear that the Yamaha 550 was stick- ing its toe into a pool of feisty sharks. "[The Yamaha] came from the drawing board into one of the coldest and hardest of motorcycling's worlds," wrote CN. "The 550cc displacement class is virtually filled with the finest machines in history. All are light, fast, handsome and can carve corners like a chef does a fine roast." The meat of the Vision was its V-twin engine, which Cycle News heralded as "the neat - est motor ever to rest in the tubes of a medium-size frame. Wide, smooth power and lots of it, is the Vision's forte." Four valves per head handled the intaking and the exhausting, the latter of which exited into two pipes from each cylinder. Four became two again under the engine case. A five-speed transmission clunked a bit, but the staff didn't gripe much. The Vision looked markedly different from its competitors in 1982, and Yamaha accentu- ated this with its odd front fork/ axle placement. The Yamaha had a trailing-axle design. Think of a Maico with its legs mounted back- ward. "Yamaha claims this design was utilized to move the forks out in order to clear the radiator and still retain quick steering," CN said. Looks can kill, but the Vision's oddball front suspenders didn't seem to impact its handling, as the staffers noted that there was more than enough offset in the triple clamp and the 550 was "definitely a quick-steering motorcycle." Time to ride! The Yamaha was well laid out, with controls fall - ing neatly into the rider's hands. "Yamaha," said CN, "gets an A in CNIIARCHIVES P134 BY KENT TAYLOR Cycle News road-tested the Yamaha Vision in the March 10, 1982, issue. YAMAHA XV 550 VISION AHEAD OF ITS TIME