Who knew: Yamaha’s Tricity was 40 years in the making

The research and development behind Yamaha’s innovative steering and suspension system found on the firm’s leaning three-wheeled Tricity scooter can be traced back to the late 1970s, the firm has revealed.

As Yamaha was developing what would become the 1977-model 50cc step-through Passol scooter for its domestic market, various prototype versions with two front wheels were also being developed concurrently on the side.

While it’s unclear if all, or even any of the original prototypes had leaning capabilities, it is clear that Yamaha gained a lot of knowledge through both bench and rigorous track testing and cemented what the brand now refers to as the product’s ultimate objective: “To someday create motorcycles that lean but do not fall.”

It’s been almost 10 years since Yamaha unveiled its first publicly shown example of what we now know as the firm’s innovative parallelogram link and cantilevered telescopic suspension system. Yamaha wowed show-goers at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show with what appeared to be a road-going version of a leaning quad bike. The Tesseract concept perfectly illustrated the firm’s leaning-multi-wheeled technology but what it also did was cleverly disguise what hindsight tells us as Yamaha’s production plans for a three-wheeled leaning scooter.

What we didn’t see in 2007 and the months that followed, was the next step of the development of what we all dismissed as a typical wacky concept-only machine. Looking more like the firm’s YZF-R1 sportsbike than the road-going quad bike of the Tesseract, Yamaha was (and probably still is) feverishly working on the ultimate road-holding sportsbike, though the high-end big-bore option was soon shelved in favour of what was becoming increasingly more important — urban mobility options.

So five years after the Tesseract made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show, the 2013 event played host to the Tricity concept — the motorcycle that would, just one year later, become the first full production machine to feature Yamaha’s leaning multi-wheeled technology.

And after some 40 years of development, and numerous other concept models such as the 850cc triple-cylinder MWT-9 concept from last year’s Tokyo event, don’t think the Tricity will be Yamaha’s sole three-wheeler. For the Japanese firm will surely do all it takes, and for as long as it takes, to achieve its ultimate objective. Watch this space.