YAMAHA

For those who have a passion for bikes and are old enough to remember Tom Petty and Guns N’ Roses tunes would agree that Yamaha were the bee’s knees. The RXs and RDs were a constant cause of wet dreams.

Yamaha came into our undeserving lives in the 80’s. It came out with the RD350 badged as a Rajdoot and it was brilliant, it was like having a crazy-in-bed high maintenance girl friend. People have gone bankrupt by taking care of it but the sheer exhilaration it gave was better than anything that you could snort up your nose.

Unfortunately it didn’t sell well but Yamaha had another ace up their sleeve, the RX100, and boy-oh-boy was it good. It was a light weight one-cylinder version of the RD. It left every other manufacturer in the dust, in terms of performance. It was frugal too, not as much as the Hondas but not as vulgar as the RDs. It became the choice ride for the young and careless.

As usual the green police spoilt the fun. Environment laws came in and the RX100 died in 1995. The company came out with another bike fortunately crazier than the 100, the RX135, it went through a number of iterations before it created a legend the RX135 5speed, it had the famous seventh port technology which the RD had used and it did fly, the new age bikes like CBZ or Pulsar were no match to this mean beast.

Growing petrol prices and environment consciousness put a stop to its life. Then Yamaha went through a dry phase with a slew of run of the mill models, they were capable but none were class leading and somebody else always did it better than them. Sales dwindled, dealers closed down and everything looked rather bleak. They even tried reviving it with John Abraham, as if that’s going to make a difference.

Yamaha woke up from its slumber and started to do what it did best, excite people. It sought to a flagship strategy; it bought in the cavalry namely the R1, raised brand awareness and bought in an aspirational sub-model the R15 which took the Indian market by storm. It didn’t end there; they bought out the radical FZ16. Sales have been racking up, dealers upgrading and once again children started dreaming about Yamahas. The balance is restored.