1985 Yamaha Maxim History
The Yamaha Corp. is famous worldwide for sports and recreational vehicles, including motorcycles. Yamaha originally started out as a piano manufacturing company, and its expertise with metal alloys led naturally to creating motorized vehicles.
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History
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The first Yamaha motorcycles were built in the 1955. After 30 years of producing motorcycles that were mostly for racing and motocross, Yamaha introduced the XV700 Maxim. The motorbike had some unique traits, such as coming in a variety of colors (most bikes, unless custom painted, were available only in black during this time).
Features
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The Yamaha XJ750 was the original 1985 model of the Maxim that was exported to the United States. It was classified as a custom cruiser and was equipped with a twin four-stroke 700cc engine. Its top speed was 135 mph, and it could accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in three seconds.
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American Competition
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In 1985, Yamaha faced an interesting challenge regarding an American trade embargo. Fuel efficiency had made the motorbike market quite lucrative for many companies, but one exception was Harley-Davidson. The large (and thirsty) bikes produced by the American company could not compete in fuel-efficiency with smaller bikes from Japan. The Reagan administration bowed to pressure from Harley-Davidson to levy a trade embargo against imported motorbikes that had more than a 700cc engine. Yamaha responded by downsizing the XJ750 to the XJ700 to narrowly avoid the Maxim being subject to the embargo.
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References
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- Photo Credit motorcycle image by Stepanov from Fotolia.com
