HEARD IT ON THE GRAPEVINE

The word on the streets of Japan recently is that Yamaha are working on a new model to replace the exiting R6 and it looks like being a faired version of the MT-07.

It seems that this new supersport bike will appear in the spring – that's soon – and it will actually be in production by the autumn. Hopefully it will be a shot in the arm for Yamaha with sales of the R6 having been on the wane for some time, leading to Yamaha announcing its demise in Europe, apart from a handful of track only models.

The current Yamaha MT-07 sports a parallel twin CP2 engine producing 74bhp, a competitor for bikes like the Kawasaki Ninja 650 in performance. So with the updates, the output will probably stay around 80bhp, with the chassis modified and faired, from the existing MT-07. With many things similar-ish, if that's a word, to the current MT-07, the production costs should be reasonable, meaning more return for Yamaha from sales of the new bike, and hopefully a reasonable price for the would be purchaser, here's hoping it will come in at under £7500, we shall see.

The new name remains to be revealed, is this going to be a nod to the outgoing R6, - the R7 perhaps - or carry a whole new name, again, we shall see when it appears.

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