Rennie Scaysbrook | November 25, 2020
Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
Good Night, Sweet Prince
Tucked at the bottom of Yamaha’s new-model press release, dated November 17, 2020, read a tiny paragraph that has huge implications for sport bikes.
“With deep consideration of evolving global market trends and regulations that limit production volumes on certain models, the following Yamaha models will be discontinued after model year 2020: YZF-R6, VMAX, WR250R and SMAX.
“Yamaha understands the iconic history of these models. Regarding the future, Yamaha is continuously looking at new ideas and concepts to support and expand the market, as well as enhance our customers’ experiences.”
That’s it.
Hard to believe there won’t be a YZF-R6 anymore. Photo: Brian J. Nelson
That is all Yamaha had to say about directing one of its most famous machines to the guillotine. The VMAX I can accept, and to be honest, it was way past its prime, regardless of that fact I still love that brute of a bike. And the WR250R dual sport and the SMAX, meh, who cares?
But the YZF-R6? This is one of the most important sport bikes ever produced, and for two decades represented a significant portion of Yamaha’s street motorcycle bottom line. It populated supersport grids for its entirety, often turning the class into a Yamaha Cup. Indeed, since MotoAmerica’s introduction in 2015, the R6 has won four of the six Supersport titles, and provided the backbone of many a club racing championship across the globe.
The R6’s death is not entirely Yamaha’s fault. The Euro 5 emissions laws that have put a stranglehold on engines like those of the 600cc class continue to tighten the noose, and with sales in the supersport segment slowing down to the speed of a leaky faucet, the writing was on the wall.
The R6 will still be sold in Europe as a track-only model, but there’s no word on if such a bike will land here. Considering we, in the U.S., must wait for pretty much every other country in the world to get new models from not just Yamaha but also many European manufacturers, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This is a sad, unfitting end for the R6, and it was rather spineless of Yamaha to release information of this magnitude in such a nonchalant manner. One would think Yamaha would be proud of what they accomplished with the R6 that they would give it a fitting send off, not hide the fact they planned to kill it buried at the bottom of a 900-word press release. Saying “Yamaha understands the iconic history of these models,” simply doesn’t cut it.
The Yamaha YZF-R6 was the benchmark of its category the minute it rolled into showroom floors at the tail end of 1998, one year after big bro R1 blew the doors off an unsuspecting public in the liter-bike category.
The R6 replaced the YZF600 Thundercat (remember that thing?) as the company’s top sports 600, and immediately moved the goal posts for a category that was dominated by the Suzuki GSX-R600 and Kawasaki ZX-6R.
Over the years, the R6 debuted a number of Yamaha firsts, including the Yamaha Chip Controlled Throttle (YCCT) and Yamaha Chip Controlled Intake (YCCI) with the landmark 2006 model, one that revved to an ear-splitting 16,500 rpm. That year’s R6 is one of the finest sport bikes ever created, and was so good it formed the basis for the rest of the model’s existence right up until this year.
There’s so many things to love about a well sorted R6. Supreme cornering poise, incredibly quick turn speed, a light and nimble chassis, very little electronics (if any) and a screaming four-cylinder engine that pumped enough power to keep every rider, no matter the skill level, on their toes.
I was lucky to ride Kevin Curtain’s Australian Championship-winning factory YZF-R6 back in 2010, and I can promise you, it was one of the best race bikes my butt has ever sat on. You could steer that thing just by thinking about it. It was so fluid, so confidence inspiring, you just wanted more, more, more. And with the Australian Championship rules at the time allowing not many more mods than a set of fairings and suspension from stock, it really highlighted to me just how good the base R6 really was/is.
For Yamaha to chop down the R6 is a sad indictment of how sport bikes are now perceived by the major manufacturers and, in a way, the R6’s death feels like that of a close friend. It now joins motorcycles like the Kawasaki ZX-7RR, Yamaha’s own unicorn, the YZF-R7, and the Ducati 916-998 range in the pantheon of the sport bike gods.
But the R6 was more than all those machines, because this was a bike anyone could buy for a reasonable price, throw a set of sticky tires on, hit the track and feel like a bad ass. It was the people’s sport bike, and it’ll take at least a couple of decades before another machine comes along (if ever) and steals that crown.
The R6 will no doubt live on in second-hand form for many years, so we can at least be thankful for that. However, the R6’s death marks a firm line in the road for sport bikes and sport bike development going forward. The supersport class is changing, and perhaps we are on the verge of another golden era as machines like the Triumph Daytona 765 and Ducati Panigale V2 start becoming allowed on the class’s grids. But that doesn’t change the fact we are extremely sad to see the end of the R6’s story.
To the Yamaha YZF-R6 we say, “Good night, sweet prince.” The world is all the poorer for your loss. CN
