Some facts about Yamaha:-

Paving the Road to Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA :-

"I want to carry out trial manufacture of motorcycle engines." It was from these words spoken by Genichi Kawakami (Yamaha Motor's first president) in 1953, that today's Yamaha Motor Company was born.


The first Yamaha motorized product was the YA-1 Motorcycle (125cc, 2-stroke, single cylinder, streetbike). It was produced and sold in Japan in 1955. See this bike below:-



The first Yamaha Motorcycles sold in the USA were by Cooper Motors, an independent distributor. The models were the YD1 (250cc, 2-stroke, twin cylinder, streetbike) and MF-1 (50cc, 2-stroke, single cylinder, streetbike, step-through) and is the year 1960, Yamaha International Corporation began selling motorcycles in the USA.

"If you are going to do something, be the best"Ginichi Kawakami, Yamaha Motor Company First President.
Yamaha Motorcycles, under this motto, employing all its creativity, and with a very strong spirit of challenge, became what it is now: one of the biggest players in the worldwide motorcycling scene.
But Yamaha's history doesn't start with motorcycles...
It is back in 1877 that Torakusu Yamaha started with the Nippon Gakki Company that later would become Yamaha Corporation: an important manufacturer of fine musical instruments.
As the company grew, they explored several fields of opportunity in the textile industry and others.
During the World War II, the company set up a factory to produce airplane propellers. This plant played an important role in Yamaha's entry to the motorcycle industry as you will see.
After the war, Yamaha Corporation had to find new ways to use the tooling and experience that had been accumulated during their times in the airplane industry, and it was then when Yamaha Motor Corporation was founded.
It's important to mention that even though this new company was just another branch of Yamaha Corporation, it was placed under an independent management. In this case, under the guidance of Ginichi Kawakami; which turned out to be a brilliant move.
Before producing their first motorcycle, Ginichi Kawakami traveled a lot establishing what would be very useful relationships. He also sent out his engineers to Europe and had them learn how to build motorcycles, particularly from DKW; whom with they kept an underground and unofficial long lasting relationship.
One proof of this is that nowadays, the only two manufacturers in the world of mass-produced five side-valve engines are Yamaha an Audi (DKW - Auto Union).



One of the most important legacies from this international relationships were all the skills learnt by Yamaha's engineers on two stroke engines know-how. Other manufacturers as Suzuki would not reach the same level of development in this area till seven years later.
Not to wonder why the first bike from Yamaha Motorcycles the 125 YA-1 was fairly a faithful copy of the 1949 DKW RT 12. The only two important differences were the four speed gearbox instead of the original three speed gearbox, and a gear transmission replacing the primary chain drive.

And here's the man behind this exclusive bike:
Ginichi Kawakami :-